DFW05FA244 · Diamond Aircraft Industries DA20-C1
Check Six Aviation Diamond Aircraft Industries DA20-C1 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05FA244
- 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
- 2 · 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
Diamond Aircraft Industries DA20-C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA20
- 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
- N63PA
- Operator
- Check-Six Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF), San Antonio, TXTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Clearance, 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 5,406-hour flight instructor was demonstrating a forced landing by simulating a loss of engine power when the single-engine airplane struck unmarked power lines approximately 30 feet above the ground. The training flight was the second flight for the student, who was a military officer enrolled in a government undergraduate flight training program. There were no reported witnesses to the accident, and no distress calls were received from the pilot. A postimpact fire consumed the composite airframe. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed and there were no obstructions to visibility at the time of the accident. Flight control continuity was established, and no mechanical anomalies or overdue inspections were noted with the engine or the airframe.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain clearance from an unmarked transmission line. A contributing factor was the low altitude flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05FA244
- Event ID
- 20050928X01545
- Case number
- DFW05FA244
- 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: a88b3d06d11b43a17a7522469b2fd1b284dae2e25f3dc5f3d4e43378088d7a5b; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:52:46.456Z.