FTW03LA061 · Creekmore Team Rocket F-1
Creekmore Team Rocket F-1 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA061
- 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
Creekmore Team Rocket F-1
- Aircraft type
- Creekmore TEAM ROCKET F-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
- N140TC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR), Houston, TXTo 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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Not installed
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The vertical stabilizer separated from the airplane in-flight while descending to land. Witnesses reported observing the airplane in a near vertical descent as it disappeared from their view, and that they heard the engine making a "high level of noise." After the airplane descended from view, the witnesses observed a piece(s) of the airplane "fluttering down." An examination of the wreckage by an FAA inspector, who responded to the accident site, and a representative from the manufacturer, revealed that the upper attachment fitting for the vertical fin aft spar was not installed. This is a 1 x 1 x.125 inch extruded angle that is designed to absorb the fin torque loads resulting from rudder deflections. Four AN3 fasteners attach this fitting to the aft section of the fuselage, and to the vertical fin aft spar. It was also observed that the vertical fin forward spar attach holes were not drilled, as directed by the assembly manual.
Probable cause
The in-flight separation of the vertical stabilizer as a result of the builder's failure to install the upper attachment fitting for the vertical fin aft spar.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA061
- Event ID
- 20021230X05645
- Case number
- FTW03LA061
- 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: 292380a6c256cfbef9a54e993d0db59845a538b47b48f73af4d2ad01696e1ece; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:33:26.935Z.