FTW99FA041 · Cessna 501
Cessna 501 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From M39 · Mena, AR to Texarkana Regional Airport (Webb Field) (TXK)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA041
- 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
Cessna 501
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 501
- 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
- N501EZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From M39 · Mena, ARTo Texarkana Regional Airport (Webb Field) (TXK), Texarkana, AR
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot picked up his newly painted airplane for a visual flight to the home base. About 17 miles south of the departure airport, witnesses initially observed the airplane in a 90 degree right bank. It continued to roll to an inverted position while simultaneously nosing down to a near vertical descent. The pilot's second class medical certificate application (July 7, 1997) indicated 3,700 hours flight time. A flight log indicted the pilot flew this aircraft 6.4 hours during the 60 days preceding the accident. No evidence was found that the pilot had not obtained sufficient rest before the flight. There was no evidence found to either suggest a medical cause for incapacitation or to rule out incapacitation for medical reasons. Aircraft maintenance records did not reveal any open discrepancies. All of the airplane was accounted for in the wreckage debris. No evidence of an in-flight fire and/or explosion, or in-flight mechanical and/or flight control malfunction was found.
Probable cause
The pilot's in flight loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA041
- Event ID
- 20001211X11552
- Case number
- FTW99FA041
- 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: 09ad069aa8c054fe87d48d53c0fa245c02c8cbe58d96a791c0374a02428d2e39; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:18:41.981Z.