ATL97LA129 · Kolb Company FIRESTAR-II FIRESTAR-I
Kolb Company FIRESTAR-II FIRESTAR-I · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From PVT GRASS STRIP, GA (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA129
- 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
Kolb Company FIRESTAR-II FIRESTAR-I
- Aircraft type
- Kolb FIRESTAR-II
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Ronald Barthelemy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PVT GRASS STRIP, GA (no airport)To 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Physical impairment(organic problem)
- Pilot in command › Stall, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the owner and builder of the airplane, the plane took off from a grass strip that was about 700 feet long. The pilot circled the grass strip 4 times and made a low pass over the strip. He then turned the airplane back towards the field, and the airplane was observed to stall. It crashed nose first into the terrain. According to the owner, the engine was still running when they arrived at the scene. About three months before the accident, the pilot had applied for a 2nd class medical certificate, which was denied because he was confused, forgetful, and evasive. Investigation revealed that at the time of the accident, the pilot had insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and kidney failure for which he was receiving hemodialysis three days a week. In February 1993, the pilot was admitted to a hospital with a left parietal intracerebral hemarrhage (stroke) and seizures, and in January 1996, he was on three anti-seizure medications. The pilot did not report these conditions to the FAA.
Probable cause
the pilot's physical impairment, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering, which led to a stall and ground impact.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA129
- Event ID
- 20001208X08562
- Case number
- ATL97LA129
- 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: 56f9d2cfc42f1f9d6c315da445c73c995b8ddcb39db27266dc442d5ad545aa47; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:52:21.168Z.