CEN23LA227 · Kolb TWINSTAR III
Kolb TWINSTAR III · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Chandler Field (AXN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA227
- 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
Kolb TWINSTAR III
- Aircraft type
- Kolb TWINSTAR
- 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
- N1025T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chandler Field (AXN), Alexandria, MNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2021)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and the pilot, who was also the builder of the airplane, were practicing soft field landings with the tailwheel-equipped experimental airplane. They performed two three-point landings to the dry turf without incident. During touchdown on the third landing, with the pilot on the flight controls, the left wheel departed from the left strut. The airplane began sliding on the turf and nosed over, coming to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, both wings, and the empennage.
A postaccident metallurgical examination of the left main landing gear revealed that it failed when the left axle fractured from bending overstress consistent with upward forces on the wheel and outward portion of the axle.
It is likely that the pilot executed an improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing that fractured the left axle in bending overstress, and a subsequent loss of control and nose over.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare and hard landing, which resulted in the left axle fracturing from bending overstress.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA227
- Event ID
- 20230606192316
- Case number
- CEN23LA227
- 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: bab34d1b136aa99add62add41acfe5240f40e8331c7020a6a3e7c50976088f49; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:41:42.307Z.