CEN25LA043 · Pitts S1E
Pitts S1E · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Zuehl Airport (1TE4) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA043
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Pitts S1E
- 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
- N52B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zuehl Airport (1TE4), Marion, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1988)
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerobatics
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On November 17, 2024, about 1415 central standard time, a Pitts Special S-1E airplane, N52B, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Seguin, Texas. The pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, he was practicing the International Aerobatic Club Advanced Free Sequence maneuver nine, which consists of a left 1 and ½ rotation snap roll to inverted flight followed by a reverse direction ½ loop downward, when he felt the left rudder lose tension, go to the firewall, and lost rudder control. The airplane ceased the snap roll and entered an inverted spiraling descent. He regained control using aileron and elevator and stabilized the airplane in upright flight. He then found that while he had right rudder control, he was unable to center the rudder due to the unresponsive left rudder pedal. The pilot returned to Zuehl Airport (1TE4) but was unable to control the airplane’s lateral alignment with the runway until he found the broken left rudder cable and was able to manipulate the rudder flight control surface by grabbing the cable and centering the rudder. During the landing roll, the airplane veered to the right and the pilot attempted to correct with left rudder but was unable to overcome the friction of the tailwheel. The airplane ground looped, nosed over, and came to rest inverted which resulted in substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer, lower left wing, and upper wings. Postaccident examination by the pilot revealed that the left rudder cable had separated at the attachment linkage to the left rudder pedal (See figure 1).
Figure 1. Broken Left Rudder Cable
Additionally, according to the pilot the right rudder cable attachment loop showed evidence of frayed wires with possible corrosion of the thimble (see figure 2).
Figure 2. Right Rudder Cable Attachment
The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA043
- Event ID
- 20241118195499
- Case number
- CEN25LA043
- 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. 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: 5b0a75291361c62af1a049bddb973deb7ed3765d7104c17c4edcfa60ac691e28; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:28:45.361Z.