FTW01LA052 · Nanchang CJ-6A
Nanchang CJ-6A · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From MSA · Mount Pleasant, TX to Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA052
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Nanchang CJ-6A
- Aircraft type
- Nanchang CJ-6
- 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
- N6373S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MSA · Mount Pleasant, TXTo Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM), Alamogordo, 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Guy wire
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the day VFR cross-country flight, the experimental-exhibition airplane was destroyed when it struck a tower guy wire while in cruise flight, and subsequently impacted the ground. The point of contact/paint transfers were on the third (7/16 inch diameter) cable, down from the top of the tower, at 273 feet agl and approximately 20 feet laterally from the northwest side of the tower. The visibility was 10 statute miles below the 3,300 feet overcast. The leading edge of the left wing and the left wing spar exhibited physical evidence of contact with the cable. A section of the left wing outboard leading edge skin was found near the base of the tower. No anomalies were found that would have contributed to a loss of engine power or flight control prior to impact with the tower cable. The lights on the tower were operating at the time of the accident. The tower was not depicted on the current Dallas-Fort Worth Sectional Aeronautical Chart, 65th edition, effective October 5, 2000, found in the aircraft wreckage. The sectional had an aeronautical information cut-off date of August 10, 2000. The tower corporation filed FAA Form 7460-2 indicating that the tower structure reached its greatest height on September 12, 2000. On September 25, 2000, the FAA Aeronautical Chart Division, Obstacle Evaluation Section received the FAA Form 7460-2, and the tower was entered into the Digital Obstacle File on October 2, 2000. The latitude/longitude and obstruction height of the tower were published in the Airport/Facility Directory/Aeronautical Chart Bulletin effective November 30, 2000 to January 25, 2001.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain obstacle clearance with the tower guy wire while the airplane was in cruise flight. A contributing factor was the pilot's failure to update his navigation chart with the location of the tower during his preflight planning/preparation. In addition, a contributing factor was the pilot's intentional flight of the airplane at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA052
- Event ID
- 20010125X00359
- Case number
- FTW01LA052
- 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, coordinates. 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: 3b20161add6b1f64cb1aae9eb73ee10d4bbd9e9354193f88b4414fb38bf46edb; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:41:04.823Z.