FTW02LA134 · Robinson Tierra II
Robinson Tierra II · Accident: loss of control in flight
From Hooker, OK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA134
- 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
Robinson Tierra II
- Aircraft type
- Robinson TIERRA
- 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
- N3960D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hooker, OKTo 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 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a family member, the flight departed from a private airstrip. Approximately 30 minutes later, a witness heard the airplane maneuvering in an area east of the accident site. The flight did not return to the airstrip and family members became worried. Subsequently, the airplane was located by local authorities 1,000 yards east of the approach end of runway 18 in a field. There were no reported witnesses to the accident. Ground scars and wreckage distribution revealed that the airplane was traveling on a westerly heading before impacting the ground nose first with a slight left bank. A review of weather at the nearest weather reporting station revealed no significant weather near the time of the accident. No pre-impact anomalies were discovered with the airplane. The airplane's maintenance logbooks and the pilot's flight logbook were not located. An autopsy and toxicological testing did reveal any findings that would contribute to a loss of control of the airplane.
Probable cause
the loss of control for an undetermined reason, which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA134
- Event ID
- 20020506X00623
- Case number
- FTW02LA134
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-05-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bc9df542c1c310933beb80c11e46b5c00ba5df089b82fc6a04782dff3ae6ded9; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:02:05.632Z.