CEN22LA302 · Pitts S1 S
Pitts S1 S · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Dodge County Airport (UNU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA302
- 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
Pitts S1 S
- Aircraft type
- Pitts S1
- 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
- N23RS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dodge County Airport (UNU), Juneau, WITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1981)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during landing touchdown with all three wheels “down,” and the airplane “tracking fine,” he removed his feet from the lower rudder pedal bars to apply braking via the upper braking pedal bars. The pedals then fell rearward toward the pilot and his right foot got wedged between the lower rudder pedal bar and the upper braking pedal bar. The pilot reported this action caught him by surprise and he applied “heavy” right rudder, thinking it was braking application. The airplane departed the right side of the runway, nosed over, and came to rest inverted in the grass next to the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the top right wing and the empennage. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that he had recently purchased the airplane and did not know that the rudder pedal return springs were not installed. The investigation revealed that the airplane was previously modified for aerobatic competition with the addition of a large rudder and that due to cockpit spacing limitations, the rudder pedal return springs could not be installed. The pilot concluded that the accident could have been prevented by performing a “very thorough” inspection and understanding all the modifications made to the airplane before flying it.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during landing, which resulted in a runway excursion and nose over. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection and the pilot’s lack of flight control system knowledge.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA302
- Event ID
- 20220704105416
- Case number
- CEN22LA302
- 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: 59e8c9ca80b76124d8e2e24243c79065340d59061d946412b400ac51e16e0879; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:25:04.288Z.