CHI96FA322 · Mankovich SONERAI
Mankovich SONERAI · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Freeman Municipal Airport (SER) to JVY
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA322
- 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
Mankovich SONERAI
- Aircraft type
- Mankovich SONERAI
- 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
- N7037J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Freeman Municipal Airport (SER), Seymour, INTo JVY
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- 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
- Fuselage, firewall › Debonded
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, major repair, inadequate
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, major repair, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(carbon monoxide)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot's airplane was #2 in a 4-airplane ferry formation of Formula V Class racing airplanes. The #3 pilot said that the #2 pilot's flying was erratic during the flight. 'He had a hard time staying in position. He would fly ahead, then drop back.' The witness said when they were within a mile of the landing airport, [the pilot] 'pulled straight up, pulled left to the east at full power, then went into a slight descent.' The witness said that he flew up along side of the pilot's airplane to try and get his attention. 'I couldn't get his eye. He would not even look at me. I chased him about 5 miles before I lost sight of him. The last time I saw him, he was below 500 feet.' Examination of the wreckage revealed that the adhesive resin which bound the rubber stripping forming the firewall lower seal was missing. The airplane had been involved in 2 earlier landing accidents, and had been repaired/inspected by pilots/mechanics of the racing association. The pilot/mechanic performed the annual inspection on 5/1/96. Two days before the accident flight the pilot said that he experienced smoke in the cockpit. He also said that the temperature was '185 degrees' and that he was very hot. The results of FAA toxicology specimens from the pilot revealed a carboxyhemoglobin saturation of 41.000 percent in the blood; loss of consciousness is attained at approximately 30.000 percent.
Probable cause
inadequate maintenance and inspection of the airplane by the pilot/owner and other airframe and powerplant mechanics, which failed to assure adequate sealing of the engine firewall, and led to the pilot's incapacitation due to carbon monoxide.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA322
- Event ID
- 20001208X06432
- Case number
- CHI96FA322
- 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: ede3d8fa4fd72125f562c94b2c565de07fb21a24ac6b3ce054836cf541ac8f50; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:12:38.367Z.