CEN26LA052 · Gray RG12
Gray RG12 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Dowagiac Municipal Airport (C91) to Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal (BMI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA052
- 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
- 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
Gray RG12
- Aircraft type
- Gray RG12
- 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
- C-FGEW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dowagiac Municipal Airport (C91), Dowagiac, MITo Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal (BMI), Bloomington, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2024)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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 26, 2025, at 0920 eastern standard time, a RG12 airplane, C-FGEW, sustained substantial damage when it was involved in an accident near Benton Harbor, Michigan. The pilot and a passenger sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations as a Part 91 ferry flight. The airplane was an experimental amateur-built replica of a Piper PA-12 that was being ferried by the pilot to the new airplane owner. About 10 minutes after the flight departed from Dowagiac Municipal Airport, Dowagiac, Michigan, an airframe vibration/flutter ensued. The vibration rapidly increased in severity despite changes in the airplane’s airspeed and engine power setting. During the flight, the ailerons contacted their mechanical stops, the horizontal stabilizer moved up and down vigorously, and the control stick was forced toward all corners of its travel range. The pilot decided to divert the flight to Southwest Lakes Airpark, Sawyer, Michigan, which had only one turf runway. After overflying the airstrip, the pilot decided it would be unsafe to attempt a landing due to the control issues and then flew to Southwest Michigan Regional Airport, Benton Harbor, Michigan, where he attempted a landing on runway 28 with winds from 240o at 27 knots gusting to 43 knots. The pilot stated that he was unable to obtain the latest wind information using his handheld radio because he was managing the control difficulties that were being experienced. The pilot stated that during landing, the airplane touched down on the main landing gear wheels, and he used full flight control inputs to counteract wind effects. During landing roll, the airplane veered right, the right wing contacted the runway, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer/rudder on impact with the runway surface. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right wing drag and anti-drag wires were attached but found loose. Flight control continuity was established to all the flight controls.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA052
- Event ID
- 20251126202068
- Case number
- CEN26LA052
- 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: 46d63903d239de114889a8161d6d75f6ded8f9007814360432f83abe63f5709c; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:34:24.388Z.