DEN91LA091 · Boeing E75N1
Boeing E75N1 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 0C05 · MACK, CO to 1V5 · Boulder, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN91LA091
- 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
Boeing E75N1
- Aircraft type
- Boeing E75
- 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
- N45747
- Operator
- Hays, Carl W. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0C05 · MACK, COTo 1V5 · Boulder, 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 · 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Weather condition › Downdraft
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Vail, CO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE FLIGHT WAS THE BEGINNING OF A 2 MONTH AROUND THE WORLD GOODWILL FLIGHT IN AN OPEN COCKPIT BIPLANE. COMMEMORATING THE SAME FEAT ACCOMPLISHED BY TWO RUSSIAN PILOTS IN 1937. ABOARD THE AIRPLANE WAS THE 1982 SOVIET AEROBATIC CHAMPION AND CURRENT COACH OF THE SOVIET AEROBATIC TEAM. THE AIRPLANE WAS FLYING BELOW THE RIDGE LINE, APPROACHING VAIL PASS (ELEVATION 10,603 FT MSL) ON THE NORTH SIDE OF I 70 AT 9200 FEET. THE PILOT SAID THEY ENCOUNTERED A SEVERE DOWNDRAFT, DRIVING THE AIRPLANE INTO THE GROUND. A REVIEW OF WEATHER DATA SHOWED EIGHT PIREPS FILED FOR MODERATE TO SEVERE TURBULENCE OVER THE COLORADO MOUNTAINS.
Probable cause
A SEVERE DOWNDRAFT. A FACTOR WAS: THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO OBTAIN A WEATHER BRIEFING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN91LA091
- Event ID
- 20001212X17248
- Case number
- DEN91LA091
- 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: 96dcf6b83792946863c34d328982f452703b01fadf28f684b91750272e082306; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:33:11.651Z.