IAD98FA086 · Consolidated-Vultee BT-13A
Consolidated-Vultee BT-13A · Accident: abrupt maneuver
From Kentmorr Airpark (3W3) to Shannon Airport (EZF)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98FA086
- 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
- 2 · 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
Consolidated-Vultee BT-13A
- Aircraft type
- Consolidated Vultee BT-13
- 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
- N550C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kentmorr Airpark (3W3), KENTMORR, MDTo Shannon Airport (EZF), FREDRICKSBURG, VA
- 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
- Other
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to witnesses, before the flight, at a local restaurant, the pilot told a waitress that he would fly by the restaurant and wave. The airplane departed the airport, initially flew west, then south, parallel to the shore line. At the marina, the airplane flew by at a low altitude, about 150-300 feet above the ground. It then made a sharp right turn, and the wings were perpendicular to the ground. The nose of the airplane dropped, and it immediately began to descend. It disappeared behind trees, and shortly afterwards, witnesses heard the impact and saw a column of smoke.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain aircraft control while buzzing a building.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98FA086
- Event ID
- 20001211X10870
- Case number
- IAD98FA086
- 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: 72185d83ef16d29b1730e0729d0544543ab56ef923e1cd16f7c09378843d6e72; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:28:48.111Z.