DEN05FA101 · Taylorcraft BC12-D
Taylorcraft BC12-D · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Taos Regional Airport (SKX) to Marble, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05FA101
- 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
Taylorcraft BC12-D
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft BC12
- 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
- N44269
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Taos Regional Airport (SKX), Taos, NMTo Marble, CO
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
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 several witnesses in the area, the pilot had been attempting to land to the west on a grass strip. The pilot had made approximately five attempts to land prior to the accident. During the sixth approach, the airplane touched down approximately midfield, the pilot added power and the airplane became airborne again. Witnesses stated that the airplane struck a road embankment at the end of the runway, continued in a steep climb, and then struck several 60-foot high aspen trees approximately 150 feet west of the end of the runway. The airplane rolled off hard to the right, and impacted the southbound lane of a county road in a nose low attitude. Airport elevation was approximately 7,800 feet mean sea level. Density altitude was calculated to be 10,063 feet. The airport runway is surrounded on every side by vegetation and terrain elevation rises dramatically in all directions. According to the owner of the airport, it is recommended that pilots land to the east and depart to the west due to the obstacles and terrain near the airport. The pilot had successfully completed a flight review on March 10, 2005.The pilot's logbook contained no record of flight activity between the flight review and the accident flight and no evidence of mountain flight experience or training. An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper decision to perform a go-around, and failure to maintain clearance from terrain and obstacles during a go-around. Factors contributing to the accident include the pilot's lack of recency of experience and lack of mountain flying experience, and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05FA101
- Event ID
- 20050701X00916
- Case number
- DEN05FA101
- 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: 9b8f78a3b772fe8fd2e9286ceeb297f5fd1c6345421414af0f0c203a9213db6c; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:59:53.890Z.