ERA22LA428 · Zenith CH 750
Zenith CH 750 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure during takeoff
From Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK) to Midwest National Air Center Airport (GPH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA428
- 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
Zenith CH 750
- Aircraft type
- Zenith CH-750
- 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
- N2992W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK), Cincinnati, OHTo Midwest National Air Center Airport (GPH), Excelsior Springs, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2015)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, during the takeoff roll in the experimental amateur-built airplane, he noticed that “something felt wrong” with his flight controls. The airplane briefly climbed before landing hard on the nosewheel, resulting in substantial damage to the engine firewall. During a postaccident examination of the airplane, a bolt that attached the control yoke to the flight controls was missing. The missing bolt and a nut were subsequently located within the fuselage of the airplane. The “hardware store” -type nut was not the castle type nut with cotter pin -type that was called for in the airplane’s engineering drawings. Review of the airplane’s maintenance records revealed that it had undergone 3 annual condition inspections since being constructed and that no documented maintenance to, or replacement of the flight control hardware had occurred. Based on this information, it is likely the builder of the airplane used improper hardware to assemble the flight controls, which resulted in the separation of the control yoke from the flight controls and the subsequent loss of control during takeoff.
Probable cause
The airplane builder’s installation of incorrect hardware in the control yoke assembly, which resulted in a loss of control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA428
- Event ID
- 20220923105988
- Case number
- ERA22LA428
- 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: 01faa051379e836148060d30d947b1eea73684dd72ab8be44daefbe0e94634d3; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:05:02.099Z.