Sundance Air Flight 6416
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Western Neb. Rgnl/William B. Heilig Airport (BFF) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA206
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N491SC
- Operator
- Sundance Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Western Neb. Rgnl/William B. Heilig Airport (BFF), Scottsbluff, NETo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), COLO SPRINGS, CO
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that while in cruise flight, he observed the left front portion of the left engine cowling starting to come loose. After receiving clearance from air traffic control, he started to divert to the nearest suitable airport. Shortly thereafter, the left cowling completely separated from the aircraft and struck the vertical stabilizer. Postaccident inspection disclosed the outboard cowling latches were in the UNLOCKED position, and the inboard latches were in the LOCKED position. A portion of the cowling remained attached via the inboard latches. The pilot said he checked the cowling latches during his preflight inspection and they were all in the LOCKED position. Orange stripes had been painted across the latches to visually indicate LOCKED and UNLOCKED positions.
Probable cause
unlatching of the left outboard engine cowling latches for undetermined reason(s), which allowed the left engine cowling to separate inflight and strike the vertical stabilizer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA206
- Event ID
- 20001208X07928
- Case number
- FTW97LA206
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-05-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 531364bc284a14e1b329e29d0325082b33455a559db2a9c197fbbb9bd6561e83; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:32:42.249Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N491SC; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.