CEN26LA131 · Quad City CHALLENGER
Quad City CHALLENGER · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft en route
From Vandalia Municipal Airport (VLA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA131
- 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
Quad City CHALLENGER
- Aircraft type
- Quad City CHALLENGER
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vandalia Municipal Airport (VLA), Vandalia, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1994)
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 structures
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
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/owner reported that during straight and level flight, he felt a “shudder” and heard a “thump” and the airplane’s engine over sped. He executed a forced landing to a field, but the airplane’s right main landing gear separated from the airplane. The airplane came to rest on the remaining landing gear and the right wing. Postaccident examination revealed that the airplane’s pusher propeller had separated from the engine. During the separation, the propeller struck the left wing, tearing the fabric covering and substantially damaging internal structure. The forced landing resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage lower longerons. Photographic evidence supplied by the pilot showed that the threaded portion of the 6 bolts that retained the propeller were still in the engine propeller hub. The propeller and the unthreaded portion of the propeller bolts were not recovered. The pilot reported that other than the propeller separation, there were no preexisting mechanical problems with the airplane. He noted that the accident could have been prevented by performing a better inspection under the propeller hub, noting that the propeller bolts are not visible during daily inspections. The airplane was not registered, and the pilot did not hold a Federal Aviation Administration issued pilot certificate. He reported that he thought the operation of the airplane was covered under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 103 – Ultralight Vehicles. 14 CFR 103 details the operation of ultralight vehicles that do not require a pilot certificate, a medical certificate, or registration of the vehicle. The vehicle requirements include an empty weight of less than 254 pounds, a fuel capacity not exceeding 5 gallons, a maximum level flight speed of 55 kts., and a stall speed of no more than 24 kts. Although the airplane was not weighed following the accident, research indicated that the accident airplane may have achieved all the requirements, except the fuel limitation. The accident airplane was equipped with a 10-gallon fuel tank. As such, the airplane should have been registered, and the pilot should have been certificated.
Probable cause
Propeller separation due to failure of the propeller attachment bolts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA131
- Event ID
- 20260302202584
- Case number
- CEN26LA131
- 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: 9f9f1c72f6216ccd9aee40e7b21b6a30cfeeb220e6c0e07d18e874ac5a511519; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:53:33.107Z.