CEN21LA016 · Kitfox Classic 4
Kitfox Classic 4 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA016
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Kitfox Classic 4
- Aircraft type
- Kitfox CLASSIC 4
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N47KC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2006)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Nose over/nose down
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his pilot-rated-passenger were conducting a local flight in the tailwheel-equipped experimental airplane. The accident occurred during the first landing after the original main landing gear, equipped with bungie-cord shock absorber, had been replaced with a main landing gear equipped with a steel-spring shock absorber. The pilot reported that after a normal touchdown on the main landing gear he pushed the control stick slightly forward to keep the airplane from ballooning, but the airplane nosed over during the landing roll. A witness reported seeing the airplane’s tail continue to rise during the landing roll until the airplane nosed over on the runway. A postaccident fire destroyed the airplane’s cabin and the inboard halves of both wings.
A postaccident review of the airplane’s weight-and-balance record indicated that the owner/builder had correctly recalculated the center-of-gravity (CG) position after the main landing gear replacement, and although the CG location had not moved appreciably, the wheel axle position had moved aft about 2.75 inches, thus increasing the airplane’s tendency to nose over during ground operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain pitch control of the airplane during landing, which caused the airplane to nose over during landing roll. Contributing to the accident was the main landing gear modification which increased the airplane’s tendency to nose over during ground operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA016
- Event ID
- 20201014102140
- Case number
- CEN21LA016
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2f8b137432e402ca00e6c562a86b7b0745f680bc1647439a499d083b877343c6; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:14:23.570Z.