FTW96LA236 · Rockwell S-2R
Rockwell S-2R · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA236
- 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
Rockwell S-2R
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell S-2
- 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
- N3646X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Airport personnel › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not identified
- Driver of vehicle › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not identified
- Facility inadequate, visual restriction
- Pilot in command › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not identified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after the airplane became airborne, the pilot saw a butane truck drive in front of him on a road that crossed the departure end of the runway. The pilot applied back pressure on the flight controls in an attempt to climb over the truck; however, the airplane's aft fuselage struck the truck, and the airplane then impacted the ground about 50 feet past the truck. Until moments before the accident, the driver of the truck and the pilot of the airplane were not able to see one another due to a line of 30 foot tall trees beside the road.
Probable cause
Failure of all personnel concerned to identify the unsafe/hazardous condition, which resulted from a visual restriction, due to trees near the intersection of the road and runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA236
- Event ID
- 20001208X05964
- Case number
- FTW96LA236
- 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: 8d4d807bff132aac0e046edf7fe3e57c25e67e3df9f33521aa6b3df6c9aa18c6; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:47:20.191Z.