ERA23LA041 · Rhinehart Stolp SDTR TOO SA300
Rhinehart Stolp SDTR TOO SA300 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Warren, OH to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA041
- 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
Rhinehart Stolp SDTR TOO SA300
- Aircraft type
- Rhinehart STOLP SDTR TOO SA300
- 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
- N160JR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren, OHTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1996)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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 in flight
- 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 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 reported that shortly after takeoff, the control stick started shaking violently fore and aft. A witness video confirmed that upon liftoff the airplane’s elevator and elevator trim surfaces began to oscillate. The pilot stated that he continued the takeoff because insufficient runway remained on which to abort, and that he had full control authority, but flew the traffic pattern 10 mph slower than normal due to the feedback on the flight controls. The video showed that the airplane flew the downwind leg at a constant altitude but appeared low based on its position relative to trees and structures in the foreground. The sound of the engine was smooth and continuous through the takeoff roll, the initial climb, and the crosswind and downwind legs of the left traffic pattern. At a point consistent with the base leg of the traffic pattern, the airplane decelerated and entered a left turn. The airplane banked steeply, the nose pitched downward, and the angle of descent steepened. The airplane’s descent appeared to shallow before it disappeared behind trees and the sounds of impact were heard. The pilot’s son, who was a passenger in the airplane, said, “He tried to turn it back, but our airspeed was so low [the plane] just started falling.” Flight control continuity was confirmed from the cockpit to the flight control surfaces. The elevator trim tab cable was intact, but free from its attachment hardware on the trim tab cable mount. Examination of the cable and its associated hardware revealed that the cable was not properly secured and pulled free of its mount. Because the maintenance records for the airplane were burned in the post-crash fire, the history of the assembly could not be determined after the airplane’s airworthiness date. It is likely that the pilot’s decision to fly at a lower airspeed and his distraction due to the fluttering elevator trim tab led to his exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during the downwind-to-base-leg turn, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and a subsequent loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the improper installation of the elevator trim tab control, which created control feedback that likely distracted the pilot during the precautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA041
- Event ID
- 20221026106205
- Case number
- ERA23LA041
- 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: 69018260d03cf5f4cfd3cfa5aca7ff36ca7f60b9f28089ed1f03b43ca94195ba; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:19:42.641Z.