DEN99LA080 · Artic Aircraft Corp. S-1B2
Artic Aircraft Corp. S-1B2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA) to Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA080
- 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
Artic Aircraft Corp. S-1B2
- Aircraft type
- Artic S-1
- 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
- N70AT
- Operator
- Charles T. Mallard · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA), COTo Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS), Rock Springs, WY
- 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
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing Lamar, Colorado, with an intended destination of Rock Springs, Wyoming. During initial climb takeoff, the pilot lost directional control and the aircraft collided with a fence off the end of the runway. Following the accident, the pilot reported to an FAA inspector that the left tire brace strut failed, creating an asymmetrical condition, and that he then made a forced landing. However, according to a mechanic at the airport, the right brace strut and landing gear had separated from the aircraft, not the left. It was also his opinion that the damage sustained to the right landing gear and brace strut was due to impact forces sustained during the collision with the fence. At the time of the accident, the pilot had accumulated a total of one hour of flight time in make and model. According to the FAA, the pilot had a past medical history of neuroses and several drug and alcohol related offenses. The last record of the pilot being issued a valid second class airman's medical certificate was on May 13, 1991. All attempts to contact the pilot were unsuccessful.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during initial climb following takeoff. A factor was the pilot's lack of experience in the type of aircraft, and the fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA080
- Event ID
- 20001212X18750
- Case number
- DEN99LA080
- 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: 4d8717985307699e570ac3c677de25bcd0a8f7330f45a0422ac7030b2cc01a3c; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:11:11.918Z.