FTW96FA399 · Ayres S2R-T45
Ayres S2R-T45 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From LANEPORT, TX to Haskell Municipal Airport (15F)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA399
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Ayres S2R-T45
- Aircraft type
- Ayres S2
- 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
- N3107B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LANEPORT, TXTo Haskell Municipal Airport (15F), Haskell, TX
- 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 · 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed throughout the area for the night cross-country flight, which originated from the operator's private airstrip at approximately 0435. The noninstrument-rated commercial pilot did not file a flight plan for the intended 195 nautical mile flight. Concerned relatives reported the airplane missing, when it failed to arrive at its destination by 0630. The airplane was not equipped with an ELT. The wreckage was located in an open pasture approximately 5 miles west of the point of departure, at approximately 1830 the next evening. Physical evidence indicated that the airplane impacted the ground in a nose down attitude at a high rate of speed. Flight instruments installed in the airplane consisted of an altimeter, an airspeed indicator, a magnetic compass, and a slip (ball) indicator. There were no reported eyewitnesses to the accident. Examination of the wreckage at the accident site did not disclosed any mechanical problems or evidence of preimpact malfunction.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent flight into adverse weather conditions, and subsequent loss of aircraft control due to spatial disorientation. Factors relating to the accident were darkness, the prevailing fog and low ceilings, the inadequate flight instruments available to the pilot, and the pilot's lack of instrument experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA399
- Event ID
- 20001208X06716
- Case number
- FTW96FA399
- 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: d628393b835e6eabf96d9bd1f570b14b7dcc6caa531fa8c06d095f20a0a69bc3; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:11:07.551Z.