DEN06FA010 · Lancair LC-40-550FG
Lancair LC-40-550FG · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Southeast Iowa Regional Airport (BRL) to Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06FA010
- 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
Lancair LC-40-550FG
- Aircraft type
- Lancair LC-40
- 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
- N101HK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southeast Iowa Regional Airport (BRL), Burlington, IATo Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS), Steamboat Spgns, 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/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 private pilot held an instrument rating and had logged 2 hours of night flight time within the previous 60 days. At the time of the accident, he was operating under night visual flight rules, in mountainous terrain, without a flight plan. The National Track Analysis Program (NTAP) radar data illustrated that the pilot initiated a descent from 14,000 feet msl at 1919:55. The rate of descent varied between 500 feet and 1,000 feet per minute. The last radar position recorded was at 1927:20. The airplane was at a location of 40 degrees, 21 minutes, 24 seconds north latitude, 106 degrees, 41 minutes, 49 seconds west longitude, at an encoded altitude of 10,500 feet msl. The airplane was located in a densely wooded area on the north face of a peak, at an approximate elevation of 10,500 feet msl, 580 feet west of the last radar position. Sunset was recorded at 1817 and the end of civil twilight was 1844. The moon rose at 2057 on the preceding day (October 21, 2005), and set at 1312 on the day of the accident. An examination of the airplane's systems, airframe, and engine, revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation prior to impact.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from terrain. Contributing factors include the pilot's lack of recent experience, the pilot's improper in-flight planning and decision making, the dark night and the mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06FA010
- Event ID
- 20051027X01745
- Case number
- DEN06FA010
- 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 2005-10-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 124b374f33fb83fedf93ae7e9e2b572469dc30416fc0ddebd186c9a4582d1f15; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:47:18.892Z.