FTW99LA161 · Wsk Pzl Mielec M-18
Wsk Pzl Mielec M-18 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA161
- 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
Wsk Pzl Mielec M-18
- Aircraft type
- WSK PZL Mielec M-18
- 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
- N52401
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The agricultural airplane settled back to the ground after takeoff to the south from a private air strip 'as if it had encountered a downdraft.' The airplane impacted a levee south of the 2,600 foot air strip and nosed over. Subsequently, a postimpact fire erupted and consumed the airplane's fuselage. The pilot stated that it was his sixth insecticide/fertilizer application flight of the day, and that the airplane had 'lifted off the ground at the same spot it always does.' The pilot added that there was a 'small thunderstorm' north of the air strip at the time of the accident. He reported that the wind had been from 263 degrees at 4 knots all morning. The closest weather reporting station, located about 15 miles southwest of the accident site, reported calm winds. The operator stated that he could find no anomalies with the airframe and engine. He added that the airplane was within weight and balance limitations at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent flight into adverse weather, which resulted in a loss of aircraft control. A factor was the downdraft weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA161
- Event ID
- 20001212X18995
- Case number
- FTW99LA161
- 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: 4aa531ef13414d3b3737b4d32d85d55e1a871b6d60f6c4b5fba0457bca1df84a; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:31:02.327Z.