CEN22LA202 · Cessna 421C
Raider Aviation Cessna 421C · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Morehouse Memorial Airport (BQP) to Marianna Municipal Airport (MAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA202
- 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
Cessna 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N619AC
- Operator
- Raider Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morehouse Memorial Airport (BQP), Bastrop, LATo Marianna Municipal Airport (MAI), Marianna, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
- 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 stated that, immediately after departure, he heard a loud pop and the control yoke oscillated violently. He declared an emergency and diverted to an airport with a longer runway and emergency services. The control yoke and airplane continued to oscillate until the airplane was on final approach, then the oscillation stopped. The pilot landed the airplane without further incident. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right elevator had mostly separated from the horizontal stabilizer and only a small portion of the inboard elevator remained attached. There was a small puncture on the right side of the rudder, likely from the elevator impacting the rudder when it separated in flight. The elevator trim push-pull tube remained attached to the trim actuator; however, there was no bolt, nut, or cotter pin attached to the aft fork connection, and the trim tab was missing. The push-pull tube did not exhibit any preaccident damage or anomalies. The remainder of right elevator and trim tab were not located. The elevator trim system was re-rigged two days before the accident. The maintenance personnel stated that they did not ensure that the push-pull tube hardware was reinstalled. The load applied between the push pull tube and the trim tab held the bolt in place for 4 flight hours, and it’s likely that every time there was no load on the bolt it was able to move. Once the bolt finally backed out, the trim tab would have been free to move without control. It is likely that the freely moving trim tab resulted in the airplane oscillation and ultimately the in-flight separation of the elevator.
Probable cause
The failure of the maintenance personnel to properly reinstall the elevator trim tab hardware, which resulted in an in-flight separation of the elevator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA202
- Event ID
- 20220516105086
- Case number
- CEN22LA202
- 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: 049695887c50bb0e6e8df611b811fd32fa5937315676ef9ff2b6716ba96349de; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:13:38.461Z.