FTW98LA035 · Pilatus PC-6
Pilatus PC-6 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Giddings, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA035
- 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
Pilatus PC-6
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus PC-6
- 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
- N19TX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Giddings, TXTo 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
- Landing
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was delivering an airplane to a new airstrip. He had been driven to the airstrip to inspect it before the first landing. While landing to the south during the airstrip's inaugural landing, the pilot lined up to land on the east side of the new runway, and the airplane touched down on an unimproved portion of the airstrip. During the landing roll on the unimproved portion, while rolling at approximately 25 knots, the landing gear impacted a swale, one of which the pilot had been briefed about, earlier. The right main landing gear collapsed. The severity of the damage incurred by the right main landing gear was found not to be compatible with the physical evidence found at the accident site. The operator, pilot, drop zone manager, and FAA inspector concurred that the failure of the landing gear was not the direct result of impacting a low rise of soft dirt at low speed. The aircraft records did not reflect any previous accident history or damage that could have led to the failure of the landing gear. The reason for the failure of the right main landing gear could not be verified.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of an unsuitable landing area. A factor relating to the accident was: the uneven terrain (with swales) at the edge of the landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA035
- Event ID
- 20001208X09026
- Case number
- FTW98LA035
- 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: 38f55d1021d499e83cd5547c0495102df621a87daa8a27fae8a42d540059a9e1; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:14:41.610Z.