FTW98FA248 · Jacob Tussel EVERETT B1
Jacob Tussel EVERETT B1 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Presbyterian Santa Fe Medical Center Heliport (NM21) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA248
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Jacob Tussel EVERETT B1
- Aircraft type
- Jacob Tussel EVERETT B1
- 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
- N30BP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Presbyterian Santa Fe Medical Center Heliport (NM21), STANLEY, NMTo 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
- In flight 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aerobatics, intentional
- Pilot in command › Altitude, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses said the pilot passed over their house between 300 and 500 feet and made 'a hard right roll. They said the 'plane [engine] usually cuts out or dies when he is upside down and will restart when he levels out. The engine did restart or picked up rpm and then he banked right and leveled out. . .He dipped down at about a 30 degree angle' and impacted the ground. The witnesses said the pilot normally flew around the area once or twice a week, and it was not uncommon for him to roll the airplane at a low altitude over their house. The pilot had had a heart attack in 1994, but did not report it on his medical certification applications in 1995 and 1996. He had recently begun taking Prinivil and Pravachol. The autopsy report listed the cause of death as 'massive traumatic injuries associated with an airplane crash.'
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional performance of an aerobatic maneuver at an altitude insufficient for a safe recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA248
- Event ID
- 20001211X10055
- Case number
- FTW98FA248
- 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: 32f559738f6909784d154b325b77475003bef1dc7ea27d7094b16a6357ee112b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:34:08.419Z.