FTW03LA164 · Aerotek Pitts S-2A
Aerotek Pitts S-2A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA164
- 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
Aerotek Pitts S-2A
- Aircraft type
- Aerotek PITTS S-2A
- 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
- N97DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM), Grand Prairie, 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, inspection, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the recovery from an aerobatic maneuver, a section of the lower left wing separated in-flight, and the airplane landed uneventfully at the departure airport. Approximately 5 minutes into the flight, the pilot was performing a power-on stall. During the stall, the airplane broke to the left, and then the airplane entered an inverted spin. During the spin, the aircraft performed approximately two rotations. To recover, the pilot reduced power, and the airplane entered a nose low attitude. The pilot "pulled hard" to recover from the nose low attitude, and the airplane again broke to the left. During recovery of the ensuing dive, the airplane was shuddering and a section of the lower left wing separated. Approximately 30 days prior to the accident flight, during a low altitude pass over some of the pilot's property, the airplane impacted the tops of some trees. The pilot repaired the airplane fabric damage with duct tape and did not report what additional inspections and/or repairs had been completed. He also had not received any formal aerobatic instruction and was learning aerobatics on his own.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper inspection of the aircraft after impacting trees on a previous flight which resulted in an in-flight separation of the lower left wing and aileron while performing aerobatic maneuvers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA164
- Event ID
- 20030602X00755
- Case number
- FTW03LA164
- 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: 65864661ef4b0fe6d3bdb3d29ca9b08e11ab78c8248548ed394fc3f61dc4af12; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:13:50.239Z.