ERA24LA251 · William Loren Noggle JA30 SUPERSTOL
William Loren Noggle JA30 SUPERSTOL · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Kaolin Field (OKZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA251
- 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
William Loren Noggle JA30 SUPERSTOL
- Aircraft type
- William Loren Noggle JA30
- 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
- N719LN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kaolin Field (OKZ), Sandersville, GATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2018)
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed his home airport to maneuver in the local area. The maneuvering was uneventful and after about 10 to 15 minutes he began navigating back to the airport. While in level flight, approaching the airport’s traffic pattern area, about 2,500 ft mean sea level, he observed that the airplane’s “nose starts drifting down” to about 45° pitch down. He moved the control stick and there was “nothing” for elevator control and he processed that “elevator control authority was lost” as it felt like the control stick had become disconnected. The roll/ aileron control authority continued to function. He reported that he reduced power, tightened his seatbelt, and the airplane’s pitch continued to decrease, but as airspeed increased, the airplane’s pitch attitude “increased somewhat” to about 30° pitch down. The airplane continued to descend towards terrain. Shortly before impact, he reported that he maneuvered to the right to avoid a house and subsequently impacted a tree and terrain. The fuselage and wings sustained substantial damage. Postaccident inspection of the airplane found that the connection point between the elevator push rod and the control stick mixer was missing all of its hardware, which normally would be secured with a locknut (the missing hardware was not recovered). Reference Figure 1 for a view of the accident airplane as found compared to an exemplar parts and hardware.
Figure 1: View of the elevator connecting rod attachment areas, exemplar and accident airplane (Photo Courtesy of FAA & Just Aircraft) The pilot reported that he performed the most recent condition inspection of the airplane 2 months before the accident. He reported that the elevator system and its hardware were not removed during the most recent inspection. The pilot was unable to produce the maintenance records despite repeated requests, nor did he hold a repairman certificate. The pilot, who was the builder of the airplane, reported that it had accumulated 130 hours of total flight time.
Probable cause
The loss of elevator control during flight due to the elevator control rod and its hardware disconnecting from its installation area, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent into trees and terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate inspection of the airplane and improperly performing the condition inspection without holding a repairman certificate.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA251
- Event ID
- 20240610194425
- Case number
- ERA24LA251
- 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: 1f27e48711290dc8d3438af2e30b42a2c686a76f11504fa36dbf3cc2afdf41a4; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:52:00.398Z.