CHI05LA250 · Porterfield FP-65
Porterfield FP-65 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Sedalia, MO (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA250
- 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
Porterfield FP-65
- Aircraft type
- Porterfield FP-65
- 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
- N37855
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sedalia, MO (private airstrip)To 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
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
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 was substantially damaged when the pilot lost control and impacted terrain. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector assigned to the accident, a witness reported that the airplane rolled upside down and descended to the ground. The wreckage was confined to the immediate area of the impact. The airplane was resting on its nose, with the empennage oriented upward about 60-degrees relative to the terrain. A post accident examination was conducted and no anomalies associated with a pre-impact failure were observed. There was no record of the pilot ever having been issued a pilot or medical certificate. A flight time logbook for the pilot was not located. Maintenance logbooks for the airplane were not located. The FAA forensic toxicology report for the pilot stated that ethanol was detected in blood, vitreous fluid, muscle, brain, and urine samples. Blood ethanol level was measured as 46 mg/dl (0.046 percent), vitreous ethanol level was 44 mg/dl (0.044 percent), and urine ethanol level was 92 mg/dl (0.092 percent). Federal regulations stated that a pilot may not operate an aircraft with a blood alcohol level of 0.04 percent or greater.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed and the inadvertent stall/spin resulting in an in-flight loss of control and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA250
- Event ID
- 20050901X01363
- Case number
- CHI05LA250
- 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 2005-09-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 14e4149cfedd653a9f958deb2899ae13e5733a061a31c229d0cd3f13c381043c; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:54:29.247Z.