FTW97LA196 · Ayres S2R-T34
Ayres S2R-T34 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA196
- 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
Ayres S2R-T34
- 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
- N30982
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the he was making his 7th takeoff that day from a grass airstrip which was oriented perpendicular to a gravel road located just beyond the departure end. Just as the aircraft lifted off, approximately 5-6 feet AGL, the pilot caught a glimpse of a truck passing from right to left along the gravel road. An instant later, the main landing gear and propeller impacted the truck. The aircraft came to rest in a pasture approximately 150 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. Both the truck and aircraft were structurally damaged. The pilot also reported that the runway end was not marked adjacent to the road and did not have a designated overrun area. Additionally, the gravel road was lined with 'sparse bushes and tall trees' which made it difficult for the pilot and the driver of the truck to see each other.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with a moving vehicle. Factors were: the lack of runway signs and a runway safety area, and the difficulty for the pilot and driver of the vehicle to visually detect each other due to high vegetation at the edge of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA196
- Event ID
- 20001208X07919
- Case number
- FTW97LA196
- 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: 6a08d32e788344e39020af0b6cd89133b594bec35fc042e209d3ecb71fb61317; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:26:25.125Z.