NYC99FA097 · Ives SONERAI II-L SONERAI II
Ives SONERAI II-L SONERAI II · Accident: abrupt maneuver while maneuvering
From Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT) to Windham Airport (IJD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99FA097
- 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
- 1 · 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
Ives SONERAI II-L SONERAI II
- Aircraft type
- Ives SONERAI II-L
- 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
- N56RA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT), Fitchburg, MATo Windham Airport (IJD), Willimantic, CT
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Owner/builder › Procedure inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Eastford, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
After having breakfast with a friend, the pilot departed. No one else reported seeing him or the airplane until a witness, approximately 50 yards from the accident site, saw the airplane a little over tree top level. While staying in the vicinity of the accident site, the airplane conducted several aerobatic maneuvers. Then, while in a steep turn to the left, the right wing separated, and then the left. The engine continued to run until ground impact. Examination of fractures surfaces on the spar-box revealed cold welds, and corrosion.
Probable cause
Inadequate welding of the airplane's spar-box by the owner/builder, which resulted in a total spar-box failure in-flight. A factor in the accident was the pilot's decision to perform aerobatics.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99FA097
- Event ID
- 20001205X00548
- Case number
- NYC99FA097
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: aa07196c6a8d939fbb7375d88f0159c4447aecbbec1318efebc880cd74a9fe9e; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:08:44.814Z.