DEN88DQA03 · Surline SIDEWINDER
Surline SIDEWINDER · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN) to Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport (TCS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN88DQA03
- 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
- 2 · 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
Surline SIDEWINDER
- Aircraft type
- Surline SIDEWINDER
- 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
- N185SA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN), Raton, NMTo Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport (TCS), Truth or Consequences, NM
- 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 · 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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/spin
- 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
- Manufacturer › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- Propeller system/accessories › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WITNESSES HEARD THE ACFT ENG SOUND INCREASE DRAMATICALLY AS THE ACFT PASSED OVER A GEN AVIATION AIRPORT. THE ACFT WAS SEEN BY ANOTHER WITNESS AT LOW ATL, ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT 200 FT, AS THE NOSE PITCHED UP. THE ACFT THEN ENTERED A SPIN AND IMPACTED THE GROUND. THE INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE WOODEN PROPELLER HAD SEPARATED IN FLIGHT AND IT WAS LATER FOUND NEAR WHERE THE FIRST WITNESS HEARD THE ENG SOUND INCREASE. EXAMINATION OF THE PROP SHOW ALL THE BOLTS THAT SECURE THE PROP TO THE CRANKSHAFT WERE SHEARED. THE EXAMINATION FURTHER REVEALED THAT THERE WAS NO REINFORCING PLATE BETWEEN THE BOLT HEADS AND THE WOODEN PROP HUB, ONLY THE FRONT SPINNER BULKHEAD. THE FRONT SPINNER BULKHEAD SHOWED WEAR AS DID THE BOLT HOLES IN THE PROP HUB.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN88DQA03
- Event ID
- 20001213X25246
- Case number
- DEN88DQA03
- 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: 5e82f2c59df70da81d68059374c4c602ab2f3c4f2554d64de2516946e486a4c8; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:47:31.459Z.