FTW96FA352 · Grumman American AA-1B
Grumman American AA-1B · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From 1V5 · CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA352
- 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
Grumman American AA-1B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-1
- 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
- N6505L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1V5 · COTo 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Numerous witnesses at about 7,000 feet elevation observed the airplane flying at low altitude in mountainous terrain. The airplane struck power lines and trees while attempting to climb through a steep narrow canyon. The pilot possessed a student pilot certificate and was carrying his son as a passenger. He had recently moved to Colorado from Long Island, New York. The pilot's flight instructor, who had ferried the airplane from Long Island to Colorado, cautioned him that his airplane 'was not good for Colorado' because it was underpowered. The instructor also 'strongly encouraged' the pilot to get a mountain checkout. A low level of tetrahydrocannabinol carboxylic acid (active metabolite of marijuana) was detected in the pilot's blood. The same substance was detected in the passenger's urine.
Probable cause
The pilot's poor judgment in attempting low altitude flight in mountainous terrain without adequate mountain flying training which led to low altitude maneuvering exceeding the climb capability of the airplane. Factors in the accident were: the pilot's overconfidence in his personal ability, lack of experience in flying in mountainous terrain, lack of familiarity with the geographic area, and the mountainous and canyon-featured terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA352
- Event ID
- 20001208X06484
- Case number
- FTW96FA352
- 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: 8ea43ebd68d32b927cdc8855a60d13e9446b2d9ad6233022bf17628f800bde5a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:13:10.626Z.