SEA01LA131 · Rockwell International S-2R
Craigmont Air Service Rockwell International S-2R · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water
From Craigmont Municipal Airport (S89) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA131
- 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
- 1 · 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
Rockwell International S-2R
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell S-2
- 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
- N5011X
- Operator
- Craigmont Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Craigmont Municipal Airport (S89), Craigmont, IDTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the aircraft did not return from an aerial application flight, a search of the area began. The aircraft was located in an open flat to rolling wheat field about two miles from the airport. Impact signatures indicate that the aircraft collided with the terrain in a nose low attitude. A local resident who knew the pilot and aircraft reported that she observed the aircraft headed to the southwest and that "he (the pilot) wasn't flying right..." and that "...he was slowly descending and his right wing would dip down then up then down then up. His plane was never flying steady like normal." No evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction was found. No evidence of pilot incapacitation was found.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA131
- Event ID
- 20010716X01438
- Case number
- SEA01LA131
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-07-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2d6026aa7b3313df8ec16ecce08b653dc7e4709ba0fd824633e3f2ddddad14c6; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:27:44.404Z.