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DFW05LA140 · Debus/Mountain/Bowes Debus-Casst-Snoshoo

29 May 2005 · Oklahoma City, OK, United States

Debus/Mountain/Bowes Debus-Casst-Snoshoo · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering

From F29 · Oklahoma City, OK to Oklahoma City, OK

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Event

NTSB case
DFW05LA140
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

Debus/Mountain/Bowes Debus-Casst-Snoshoo

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
N102MB
Operator
Steven L Mountain · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From F29 · Oklahoma City, OKTo Oklahoma City, OK
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 engine power
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
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 › Airspeed, not maintained
  • Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

On the third lap of an International Formula One Air Race the pilot aborted the race and turned south toward the center of the airport after experiencing a complete loss of engine power. The private pilot performed an emergency descent with an intended landing on runway 35R (a 3,502-foot-long and 75-foot wide asphalt/concrete runway). Near the approach end of runway 35R and approximately 50 feet above ground level (agl), the airplane stalled and started to spin to the left. Subsequently, the airplane impacted the edge of runway 35R in a near vertical nose-down attitude before coming to rest in an inverted position. An examination of the modified four-cylinder engine revealed the loss of engine power was due to a fracture of the number two piston to crankshaft connecting rod.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall. A contributing factor was the loss of engine power as result of the fracture of the number two piston to crankshaft connecting rod.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record DFW05LA140
Event ID
20050615X00771
Case number
DFW05LA140
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: bf6e8ba549c594fd410eebaf4be63e08d1374cfd95aaccc3fc9e6202dc82ca52; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:07:12.448Z.