DEN05LA110 · Cessna TU206F
Cessna TU206F · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Flat Rock, UT to Vernal Regional Airport (VEL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's flight rules. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA110
- 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
Cessna TU206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N1059V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flat Rock, UTTo Vernal Regional Airport (VEL), Vernal, UT
- 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 Possible conflict
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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/mush
- 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
The pilot said he checked the temperature and winds then took off to the south from the dirt airstrip. At rotation, approximately 3 to 4 feet off the ground, the pilot said the airplane encountered a windshear. The pilot said he lost control of the airplane, dropped to the ground to the right of the runway, hit the sagebrush, and nosed over. The passengers on board, who were employees of a drilling company, stated that the wind conditions were "calm" and they "felt no turbulence or shear during this departure." One passenger said that the airplane accelerated in a "zig zag" manner and then lifted off, and that it was smooth once airborne. The passenger said they climbed "20 to 40 feet high, then the airplane abruptly pitched nose down sinking until catching the sage brush ..." Another passenger said the airplane started on the left side of the runway in soft dirt and accelerated along the left side. He said the airplane "lifted off at a slow speed, climbed 30 to 40 feet high, then sunk back to the surface ..." The airstrip had been recently graded. The center of the runway was hard. The sides were soft. According to the drilling company, they had chartered the airplane to fly the drilling crew from the airstrip back to their home in Vernal, Utah. The FAA reported the pilot was not certified to fly under Title 14 CFR Part 135, on-demand air taxi. The winds conditions reported at stations surrounding the airstrip within a radius of 57 miles ranged from calm, to out of the west at 4 knots, to out of the east-southeast at 11 knots. The average temperature in the area was approximately 75 degrees. The estimated density altitude for the area was 9,856 feet. An examination of the airplane showed no pre-impact anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during takeoff. Factors contributing to the accident were the soft dirt airstrip, the low airspeed and the stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA110
- Event ID
- 20050718X01040
- Case number
- DEN05LA110
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e022db94a6536696f4f22214af64098a82222f0e9a378c3cb9d8fafa9cbc15de; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:57:29.136Z.