CHI00LA239 · Kollier PITTS S1C
Kollier PITTS S1C · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Salem Municipal Airport (I83) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA239
- 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
Kollier PITTS S1C
- Aircraft type
- Kollier PITTS S1C
- 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
- N87V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem Municipal Airport (I83)To 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 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while practicing aerobatics, he intentionally entered an inverted flat spin at 2,800 feet above ground level. The pilot reported that once the airspeed slowed to 80 mph, he added full forward stick and right rudder to enter the spin. He then added stick pressure in the direction of the spin and added power to make the spin flatten out. After one and a half turns, he neutralized the stick pressure and brought the power to idle. He then attempted to recover from the spin by adding left rudder followed by aft stick pressure. The pilot reported that although he did not recognize it at the time, he believes in hindsight, that the airplane then transitioned to a very nose low, accelerated upright spin in the same direction as the inverted spin. He reported that after approximately 15 turns, when he was unable to recover from the spin, he decided to let go of the flight controls. He reported that the spin remained steady and he still believed that he was inverted. He reported that just prior to impacting the terrain, he added right rudder and forward stick pressure. According to the pilot, the spin stopped with the airplane in a nose low attitude. The pilot reported that he added back stick pressure to raise the nose. The airplane impacted the ground in an upright attitude at high velocity after which it nosed over.
Probable cause
The pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane during an intentional inverted flat spin and the initial control inputs he used in an attempt to recover were improper. A factor associated with the accident was the pilot became disoriented during the maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA239
- Event ID
- 20001212X21667
- Case number
- CHI00LA239
- 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: 1b93927b8f930a0481ec778303abc0e7ba58a7341b0ed499b320a37e725e4473; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:08:15.449Z.