DEN00LA031 · Luscombe 8E
Luscombe 8E · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Lake County Airport (LXV) to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA031
- 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
Luscombe 8E
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N1941B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake County Airport (LXV), Leadville, COTo Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA), Amarillo, 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 · climb to 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
- 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/mush
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he approached the 12,560 foot mountain pass with 500 to 600 feet of clearance, but a 'strong downdraft forced me into the ground within 2 seconds; like a fly swatter.' He said that as he descended, his flight controls 'had no fell in them.' Rescue teams reached the pilot approximately 25 hours later. A pilot (with a glider rating), who reported flying within 5 miles of the accident site, said that there were lenticular clouds over the mountain all day, and the wind was blowing from east-southeast to west. A law enforcement officer said that he drove up the mountain as far as he could on the night of the accident, and the wind was blowing westward down the mountain 40 to 60 miles per hour (mph). The pilot said that the wind was 40 to 50 mph from the east. The computed density altitude was approximately 12,306 feet. The pilot said that he recommended that he should have 'possibly [flown] higher or not [have] attempt[ed] to fly over the ridge at all.'
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight decision, and the subsequent inadvertent stall/mush. Factors were the pilot's lack of total experience in mountain flying, the high density altitude, and downdraft weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA031
- Event ID
- 20001212X20231
- Case number
- DEN00LA031
- 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: 99a151237edcf6bb52d25db8b12450312d1d6d6932fd8d4bef78b03b00455d2b; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:44:29.121Z.