CHI05LA015 · Strissel Pitts S1S
Strissel Pitts S1S · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA015
- 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
Strissel Pitts S1S
- Aircraft type
- Strissel PITTS S1S
- 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
- N230SB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL), Liberal, KSTo 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft 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 experimental amateur-built airplane was substantially damaged and the pilot fatally injured during an in-flight collision with terrain. Witnesses reported that the aircraft was conducting aerobatic airwork when it entered an inverted spin. According to one witness, the airplane went into a "backward spin, then it flipped up side down and stayed [in] a spin until it disappeared over the hill." A second witness stated the airplane was "doing tricks." He reported the airplane was "upside down going in circles" and did not recover prior to impact. The airplane came to rest inverted. The flight controls remained attached to the airframe. Control continuity was confirmed from the empennage to the cockpit area and from the ailerons to the wing roots. Cable breaks exhibited a frayed condition consistent with overload tensile failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while performing aerobatic flight maneuvers resulting in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA015
- Event ID
- 20041027X01708
- Case number
- CHI05LA015
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 4e770e19b829583b20470d66c47f24a088d23326470a49b9e1ed57a892be1718; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:16:11.285Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The experimental amateur-built airplane was substantially damaged" (the Pitts came to rest inverted after an inverted spin; no fire or destruction is described), not destroyed.