FTW89DRD16 · Sours/Midget Mustang SM-1
Sours/Midget Mustang SM-1 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Lakefront Airport (NEW) to Golden Triangle Regional Airport (GTR)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW89DRD16
- 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
Sours/Midget Mustang SM-1
- Aircraft type
- Sours/midget Mustang SM-1
- 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
- N2AT
- Operator
- Clifford Grabowski
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LATo Golden Triangle Regional Airport (GTR), Columbus, MS
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING FLIGHT, THE ENGINE STARTED RUNNING ROUGH. THE PILOT DECLARED AN EMERGENCY & WAS VECTORED TO AN AIRPORT. JUST BEFORE TURNING BASE, THE ENGINE LOST POWER. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED TREES AND CRASHED. NO REASON WAS FOUND FOR THE POWER LOSS.
Probable cause
A TOTAL LOSS OF ENGINE POWER FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS. TREES IN THE EMERGENCY LANDING AREA WERE A RELATED FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW89DRD16
- Event ID
- 20001213X29366
- Case number
- FTW89DRD16
- 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: f4bc263dc6a53a83bc3dceee9e83d71cffcaa22012fdb519ef6d6842610b70db; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:48:56.413Z.