FTW98FA073 · Swearingen SA226-T
Swearingen SA226-T · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From FTG · Denver, CO to Aspen-Pitkin County Airport (Sardy Field) (ASE)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA073
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Swearingen SA226-T
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N950TT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FTG · Denver, COTo Aspen-Pitkin County Airport (Sardy Field) (ASE), Aspen, 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 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 · climb to 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed Front Range Airport (elevation 5512 feet) at approximately 2008, climbed to 7,000 feet msl, accelerated to 270 knots, and requested his IFR clearance. Weather at the time of N950TT's departure was 500 feet overcast; witnesses reported the tops of the thin cloud condition were 8,500 feet msl and it was very dark on top (no stars or moon). The pilot made several changes in airspeed and climb rate until radar indicated that he had entered an 8,500 fpm decent. The pilot reported to ATC that he had 'stalled' the airplane. Radar indicated that he then climbed at 7,500 fpm until his estimated airspeed was 10 knots, and then subsequently descended again at 8,400 fpm until he impacted the frozen ground. The pilot had flown 4 times for 7 hours in the previous 40 days. Five airline pilots, each of who had 3,000 to 5,000 hours in Swearingens, stated individually that even though the airplane is single pilot certified, they believed that 'its a two pilot airplane--because the work load is too high.'
Probable cause
The pilot inadvertently stalling the airplane and his subsequent spatial disorientation which prevented him from maintaining airplane control. Factors were excessive workload on the pilot and the dark night light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA073
- Event ID
- 20001208X09301
- Case number
- FTW98FA073
- 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 1997-12-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4367a123d025646f5aa80ac41c83433ba000d60987b6a180ee57b3c291154bc2; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:43:33.041Z.