CEN21LA326 · Gary James Lail ZENITH CH 750 CRUZER
Gary James Lail ZENITH CH 750 CRUZER · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA326
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Gary James Lail ZENITH CH 750 CRUZER
- Aircraft type
- Gary James Lail ZENITH CH 750 CRUZER
- 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
- N9667Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2018)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Immediately after takeoff, the experimental airplane experienced a rudder control malfunction, and the pilot landed back on the runway. The pilot was unable to maintain control, and the airplane departed the runway. During the runway excursion, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, and both wings. A postaccident examination of the flight controls revealed that the control cable that should have been connected to the pilot’s left rudder pedal was separated at the point where it had been swaged to the end fitting. The other flight control cables were swaged in a similar manner, and all were done improperly according to the airplane kit manufacturer. There were no other anomalies noted with the airplane. The airplane was built about 3 years before the accident, and the airplane maintenance logbooks did not show any entries related to the rudder cables. Therefore, it is likely that the cables were improperly swaged during the original build of the airplane, and the error was not discovered during subsequent condition inspections.
Probable cause
The improper swaging of the rudder control cable, which disconnected during flight and resulted in the loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA326
- Event ID
- 20210718103499
- Case number
- CEN21LA326
- 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, 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: 67cd5761256ca00e16bfe2e123c2dcf6b5cc5e1a1e4f515fd23621b69611e716; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:18:11.773Z.