FTW96FA262 · Douglas DC3A
Douglas DC3A · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport (CXO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA262
- 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
Douglas DC3A
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC3
- 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
- N23WT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport (CXO)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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 engine power
- 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
- 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(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Airspeed(vxse), not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During initial takeoff climb the copilot who was manipulating the controls called for METO (maximum except takeoff) power. After the pilot-in-command set METO power, the left engine lost power. The PIC took the controls from the copilot and called for him to feather the left propeller. The copilot did not hear the call to feather the left propeller. Maintaining an indicated airspeed of 90 knots and wings level attitude, the airplane descended into trees and impacted a rural residential paved street. The cockpit area and main fuselage were consumed by a post crash fire. Examination of the throttle quadrant revealed the propeller control levers were forward, the mixture control levers were autorich, the throttle for the right engine was forward, and the throttle for the left engine was at idle. According to a FAA operations inspector maintaining 90 knots with the propeller not feathered would result in the aircraft descending. The pilot and copilot had not completed a proficiency check or flight check for the DC3 type aircraft within the previous 24 months. Examination of the left engine did not disclose any preexisting anomalies.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to use the single engine best angle of climb airspeed resulting in a loss of control of the aircraft. Factors were the loss of power to the left engine for undetermined reasons, the flight instructor not being qualified to be pilot-in-command in the DC3, his lack of recent experience in the DC3, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA262
- Event ID
- 20001208X05955
- Case number
- FTW96FA262
- 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: c2dc273deb19dc4394a3fc1aa9a57cf2e3ab245c15badbe5afefff5f6fb6f37d; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:44:35.660Z.