DFW05LA037 · Crosley Christen Eagle II
Crosley Christen Eagle II · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Okmulgee Regional Airport (OKM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA037
- 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
- 2 · 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
Crosley Christen Eagle II
- Aircraft type
- Crosley CHRISTEN EAGLE
- 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
- N222CE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Okmulgee Regional Airport (OKM), Okmulgee, 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
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft weight and balance, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, intentional
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 witness, who was in a field approximately 1 mile north of the accident site, the airplane was performing aerobatic maneuvers in the area when the airplane flew straight up into the air, and then "fell over into a flat spin." At this point, the witness estimated that the airplane at an approximate altitude of 5,000 feet above the ground. The witness heard the engine "revving up" as the airplane descended behind a tree line. He then heard the airplane impact the ground and the engine stop running. The 1,040-hour pilot, who was occupying the rear seat of the tandem seating experimental bi-plane, purchased the airplane during the first week of July 2004. Post-accident calculations revealed that the airplane was over maximum gross weight and the center of gravity (CG) was aft of the rearward limit. According to page 3-8 of the Christen Eagle II Airplane Flight Manual, "Any particular Christen Eagle II aircraft will recover from any spin type using standard recovery techniques ONLY IF THE AIRCRAFT IS PROPERLY BALANCED. The CG of the aircraft must be within design limits to ensure safe spin recovery. Any aircraft can be dangerously loaded (CG beyond design limits) making spin recovery extremely difficult or impossible. Weight and balance considerations must be taken seriously and pilots must be absolutely certain that the flight CG of their aircraft is within design limits."
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional spin, which was unrecoverable due to exceeded aircraft weight and balance limitations as a result of improper preflight planning/preparation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05LA037
- Event ID
- 20041215X01994
- Case number
- DFW05LA037
- 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: a2aa0f3f097b6ca9768bb4863ca9ec3335d8297e87cc003c1920afcf4741b12e; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:10:45.068Z.