DFW05CA137 · PZL-Mielec M18
Hoxie Flying Service PZL-Mielec M18 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Clover Bend, AR to Clover Bend, AR
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05CA137
- 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
PZL-Mielec M18
- Aircraft type
- PZL Mielec M18
- 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
- N93982
- Operator
- Hoxie Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clover Bend, ARTo Clover Bend, AR
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
In a written statement, the 25,960-hour commercial pilot reported that he taken approximately 10 loads (approximately 4,500-lbs per load) from the east-west, 2,500-foot long by 80-foot wide grass-gravel runway prior to the accident. On the accident run, the turbine powered airplane lifted-off approximately two-thirds of the way down the runway and subsequently encountered a "twister" just after braking ground. He further stated, that after encountering the twister, the airplane yawed to the right approximately 20 degrees and lost speed and lift. The pilot said he could not maintain altitude and the airplane touched down in a field 50-to-100 feet north of the runway, and slid until the airplane collided with a levee and a road.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff. A contributing factor was the dust devil (whirlwind) encountered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05CA137
- Event ID
- 20050630X00909
- Case number
- DFW05CA137
- 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: 91dff492e2fda72cd68615783a88cf7d4f35e671989d67a1007442c750b0a0ec; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:00:59.454Z.