CHI00LA122 · Cunningham PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER PIETENPOL
Cunningham PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER PIETENPOL · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Boone Municipal Airport (BNW) to Morningstar Field (Y76)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA122
- 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
Cunningham PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER PIETENPOL
- Aircraft type
- Cunningham PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER
- 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
- N899TC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boone Municipal Airport (BNW)To Morningstar Field (Y76), Des Moines, IA
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 airplane sustained substantial damage on impact with a fence during takeoff roll. The pilot and passenger were uninjured. The pilot stated, 'Taxing to the end of the runway was uneventful and there was no indication that the wind was excessive. I performed my run-up checks, applied full power and began my takeoff roll. The tail came up normally and I continued the roll. All of a sudden I was hit by a huge gust that got under the right wing which nearly tipped the plane onto the left wing. I gained enough control to keep the airplane upright but my direction changed to where I was heading left toward the Army National Guard fence. The right wing hit the fence and the aircraft came to an abrupt stop.' The pilot further stated, 'Right wing tip 3 feet broken including front [and] rear spar when wing hit chain link fence.' A witness stated, 'Plane, on taxi for take-off on sod runway, was blown-off course by a strong gust. It rolled over 2 or 3 times into Nat Gd [National Guard] fence.' At 1605, the Boone Municipal Airport, Boone, Iowa, wind was 100 degrees at 19 knots gusts to 24 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot not maintaining directional control. Factors were the gusts and the fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA122
- Event ID
- 20001212X20787
- Case number
- CHI00LA122
- 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: 4b1b2b9a2e94f3d1150b9a8619ed610062753af8b3996c6b1a126d0b2762d06a; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:56:55.989Z.