CHI97LA302 · Rans, Inc. S-11 PURSUIT S-11 PURSU
Rans, Inc. S-11 PURSUIT S-11 PURSU · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA302
- 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
Rans, Inc. S-11 PURSUIT S-11 PURSU
- Aircraft type
- Rans S-11
- 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
- N4299Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 · 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
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who worked as an aviation mechanic for the aircraft manufacturer, installed vortex generators on the wings and fuselage of a Rans S-11. He then flew the S-11, while a chase plane followed. The S-11 pilot slowed the airplane to let the chase plane catch up. The pilot of the chase plane reported that the S-11's altitude was about 1,500 feet AGL, but the airspeed was slow. He observed the airplane doing slight Dutch rolls and '...just mushing along.' The S-11's nose pitched down and started a 1/4 spin to the left. The aircraft started to pull up from the nose down spin attitude, and then made a shallow arc before impacting the ground. The pilot of the S-11 was not a test pilot. He had a total of 3 hours in the S-11. The S-11 pilot reported the flight was a personal flight. The company did not have a policy for test flying airplanes. The engine and flight controls exhibited continuity.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and collision with the terrain. The pilot's lack of experience in the make and model of airplane was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA302
- Event ID
- 20001208X08822
- Case number
- CHI97LA302
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-09-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b4796789f5528677156d590b14395b0c0a2e65dbdb09ad87a3b3aa85aca7cf44; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:47:48.391Z.