CHI01FA077 · Watson Steen Skybolt
Watson Steen Skybolt · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Carrollton Memorial Airport (K26) to H21 · Camdenton, MO
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA077
- 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
Watson Steen Skybolt
- Aircraft type
- Watson STEEN SKYBOLT
- 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
- N50BW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carrollton Memorial Airport (K26), Carrollton, MOTo H21 · Camdenton, MO
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed on impact with terrain while performing a low altitude maneuver. The pilot and passenger were fatally injured. A witness stated, "As the plane traveled southbound and gained altitude, it rolled over once doing a 'Barrel Roll'. Immediately after that the nose of the plane went up into the air and then looped back over it's self doing a 'loop-d-loop'. It appeared that the plane then went nose first into the tree line where I lost sight of it." Another witness stated, "The wind at the time was 260 degrees at 9 knots gusting to 17 knots. With these conditions there are very bad wind shear conditions from about end of 33 for about 1 mile south up to about 400 feet." The pilot did not list any visits to health professionals within the last three years and listed "No" for "Do You Currently Use Any Medication (Prescription or Nonprescription)?" on his application for his medical. The pilot visited a doctor on June 23, 1999 and was prescribed Celexa. The last annual was dated June 22, 1999. Both propeller blades had chordwise scratches and leading edge nicks. Continuity was established to the flight control surfaces and to the engine. The engine produced a thumb compression at all cylinders. A blue liquid was in the fuel servo. The magnetos produced spark. No anomalies were found. The FAA CAMI report stated CITALOPRAM was detected in Blood and in Liver. The PDR online stated Citalopram hydrobromide is a prescription used to treat "major depression...."
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining altitude/clearance from terrain during the low altitude maneuver. Factors were the wind gusts and the low altitude maneuver the pilot performed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA077
- Event ID
- 20010222X00492
- Case number
- CHI01FA077
- 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: 369025133d6a005bd20487546cece9ed0437ef3313420f9460e149a502bee3bd; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:40:21.698Z.