FTW03LA069 · Wood Thorp T-18
Wood Thorp T-18 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP) to Baytown Airport (HPY)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA069
- 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
- 0 · 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
Wood Thorp T-18
- Aircraft type
- Wood THORP T-18
- 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
- N335BW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP), Stephenville, TXTo Baytown Airport (HPY), Baytown, TX
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 on ground/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 › Compensation for wind conditions, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a tailwheel-equipped homebuilt airplane lost control of the aircraft during the takeoff roll from the 4,200-foot long by 75-foot wide asphalt Runway 32. The 647-hour instrument-rated private pilot stated that he applied full power slowly, holding back pressure on the controls until the airplane became airborne. During the transition from back pressure to forward pressure a gust of wind came from the west. The pilot was unable to compensate for the wind in a timely fashion to maintain directional control of the airplane. The airplane became airborne after cresting the top of a berm on the east side of the runway, and landed hard on the far side of the berm, spraying the landing gear. The nearest weather reporting station, which is located 34-nautical miles north of the accident site, reported winds from 290 degrees at 17 knots, gusting to 24 knots. The peak winds were reported from 270 degrees at 27 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of directional control as result of his failure to compensate for the prevailing wind conditions. A contributing factor was the gusty crosswinds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA069
- Event ID
- 20030108X00035
- Case number
- FTW03LA069
- 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: dabc98d6d15f048aefa18468aedddab3ef9b38c5757ed2ffdd569ac6238b726c; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:32:16.815Z.