DEN00FA044 · Pilatus PC-7
Pilatus PC-7 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00FA044
- 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
Pilatus PC-7
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus PC-7
- 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
- HBHOO
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH), Goshen, INTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aerobatics, intentional
- Pilot in command › Altitude, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was ferrying the aircraft from the company's headquarters in Switzerland for a buyer in the United States. While approaching the airport to land, he requested to perform a low approach to runway 29R, which was approved by the airport tower. According to multiple witnesses in the airport tower and on the ground, they observed the aircraft with the landing gear retracted overfly runway 29R. At the midfield point, the aircraft was observed to roll 360 degrees twice to the right, followed by a 360-degree roll to the left. The nose pitched up, then descended toward the ground. The right wing impacted on an adjacent taxiway and the airplane cartwheeled and exploded. During a postaccident examination of the aircraft, no airframe or engine anomalies were identified. Radar data provided evidence that the aircraft was traveling at 215 knots seconds prior to impact. The airport is located within the boundaries of Class D airspace and according to FAR 91.303, aerobatic flight within the surface area of Class D airspace is prohibited.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of aircraft control while performing low level aerobatics at an altitude insufficient to make a safe recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00FA044
- Event ID
- 20001212X20345
- Case number
- DEN00FA044
- 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: 5e412e6126430b1080bcfbab411c4ddcaabd2517a127fe0154c656df646ad7bd; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:30:12.709Z.