WPR26LA185 · Craig Ellison BEARHAWK FOUR
Craig Ellison BEARHAWK FOUR · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA185
- 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
Craig Ellison BEARHAWK FOUR
- Aircraft type
- Craig Ellison BEARHAWK FOUR
- 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
- N953CN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2026)
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 May 12, 2026, about 1940 Pacific daylight time (PDT), an experimental amateur-built Bearhawk Four airplane, N953CN, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident at Olmstead Sky Ranch in Sandpoint, Idaho. The pilot was uninjured, and the passenger sustained a minor injury. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.
The pilot and a pilot-rated passenger were landing at the conclusion of the second test flight of the tailwheel-equipped airplane. The pilot reported that after the airplane touched down he noticed the right brake seemed to drag, and the airplane deviated progressively harder to the right. The pilot applied rudder and left brake inputs to compensate. As the airplane slowed, it nosed over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the rudder, wings, and wing strut. The right brake remained locked after the airplane came to rest, and during the recovery of the airplane from the runway.
The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA185
- Event ID
- 20260513202984
- Case number
- WPR26LA185
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-05-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fa1fd09954a5246c06f6ab040e18c6ebfe7207bb901ac40a7e985d6c43ddd6be; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:28:09.400Z.