FTW98LA419 · Hundere KITFOX II
Hundere KITFOX II · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 53TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA419
- 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
Hundere KITFOX II
- Aircraft type
- Hundere KITFOX
- 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
- N8114H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 53TXTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 97 hour non-instrument rated, private pilot lost control of the tailwheel equipped airplane during takeoff from runway 13. The pilot reported that prior to departure he observed aircraft taking off and landing to the north and to the south. He then observed the wind sock in the 'calm' position, and taxied the airplane to the approach end of runway 13 for takeoff. During the takeoff roll the airplane encountered a gust of wind from 120 degrees, which 'lifted the airplane off the ground prematurely.' The airplane 'stalled;' subsequently, the left wing contacted the ground first and the airplane ground looped. After the accident occurred the pilot determined that the windsock had been stuck against its support pole and was not providing an accurate indication of wind speed and direction. The pilot stated that the wind was from 120 degrees at 8 knots gusting to 15 knots at the time of the time of the accident. Additionally, the pilot had accumulated a total of 7.7 hours in the airplane at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent stall. Factors were the wind sock that was displaying inaccurate information, the gusty wind condition, and the pilot's lack of experience in the tailwheel equipped airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA419
- Event ID
- 20001211X11076
- Case number
- FTW98LA419
- 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: f6134766a3c9b37d88e8805a8b654bb698203fc21c1158b108d2f949551e14ff; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:39:46.683Z.