FTW96FA239 · Fredenburg CHALLENGER II CHALLENGER
Fredenburg CHALLENGER II CHALLENGER · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From 33F to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA239
- 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
- 2 · 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
Fredenburg CHALLENGER II CHALLENGER
- Aircraft type
- Fredenburg 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
- N2087P
- Operator
- Troyce A. Pearson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 33FTo not recorded
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush; Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the landing, the ultralight kit airplane struck a ditch trencher, trailer, and trees. Prior to the impact, witnesses heard the engine at idle, the pilot 'gave a little gas' and the 'motor revved.' Flight control continuity was confirmed. Examination did not reveal any water or debris in the fuel system nor engine anomalies that would have contributed to the accident. The commercial pilot-in-command, who held neither an FAA medical certificate nor a flight instructor certificate, was flying with the owner/student pilot until the owner became familiar with the Challenger II. In 1991, the commercial pilot-in-command received a 0.5 hour introductory flight in a Challenger II airplane. He had flown a single seat ultralight vehicle for 85.5 hours in the 15 months prior to the accident. In May 1996, he had completed '3 or 4 landings' solo in the Challenger II and flown 2.5 hours with the current owner/student pilot. The student pilot/owner had received 7.4 hours dual instruction in an ultralight vehicle and was endorsed to solo the Challenger ultralight. The owner had signed the document to place the Challenger under an ultralight vehicle registration; however, the airplane was still registered with the FAA as an experimental airplane at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's failure to maintain airspeed. A factor was the pilot's lack of total experience in the make/model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA239
- Event ID
- 20001208X05952
- Case number
- FTW96FA239
- 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: 8ecd688bb0dd9d43093282c323231495739c1efe3589e6b1515d407572831f80; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:20:35.154Z.