IAD05LA089 · Longtin Kitfox Model III
Longtin Kitfox Model III · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Eagles Nest Airport (NH40) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA089
- 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
Longtin Kitfox Model III
- Aircraft type
- Longtin KITFOX MODEL
- 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
- N795JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagles Nest Airport (NH40), New London, NHTo 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, 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 airplane took off from runway 14 and after clearing a tree line, it entered a right spin, and vertically impacted a golf course. A retired airline pilot stated that winds at the time were from the west, gusting to about 30 mph, and the windsock was "straight out." The airline pilot further stated that the pilots normally took off from runway 14 and landed on runway 32 because of the slope of the runway, but the policy wasn't "cut in stone." The airplane was purchased by the pilot about a month earlier; however, he and another pilot had previously owned the same make and model, which was substantially damaged when a hangar roof collapsed on it about 4 years earlier. The pilot had accrued an estimated 15-20 hours in the accident airplane, and had taken off under similar wind conditions "many times." The pilot had a heart condition, but there was no evidence that it contributed to the accident. An examination of the wreckage revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. A factor in the accident was the tail wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA089
- Event ID
- 20050712X00988
- Case number
- IAD05LA089
- 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: 9d0ed5cd2301f038b32e57fc16966b099b4738605779c20e63485ec93033dbe7; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:59:32.544Z.