FTW99FA172 · Keen GLASAIR I
Keen GLASAIR I · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP) to Town & Country Airpark (F82)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA172
- 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
Keen GLASAIR I
- Aircraft type
- Keen GLASAIR
- 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
- N233TK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP), Stephenville, TXTo Town & Country Airpark (F82), Lubbock, TX
- 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
- 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/spin
- 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 › Maneuver to avoid obstructions, performed
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 4,600-hour private pilot was making a night cross country flight. Witnesses in a vehicle driving northeast bound observed the green navigation light and landing light of the airplane. The airplane was flying parallel to the highway heading northeast, at an estimated altitude of approximately 50 feet agl. The witnesses continued to observe the lights of the airplane after it passed their vehicle, at a distance of about 100 yards off the left side of the road. The witnesses reported that they observed the airplane 'abruptly initiate a near vertical climb' and subsequently observed the lights of the airplane descending toward the ground as if the airplane was 'corkscrewing.' The wreckage of the airplane came to rest 30-feet from the base of a power line that crossed the airplane's flight path. There was no evidence found indicating that the airplane had contacted the power line. No anomalies were found with the engine or airframe that could have prevented normal flight operations. Toxicology was positive for fluoxetine (an anti-depressant).
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent stall while performing an evasive maneuver to avoid colliding with powerlines. Factors were the night light condition and the pilot's decision to fly at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA172
- Event ID
- 20001212X18989
- Case number
- FTW99FA172
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-06-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 60410660d4b8a8d18046ea345838b43b13251260a66fb8d8f95d350fdf7d20ae; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:02:56.996Z.