DFW06CA064 · WSK-PZL Warzawaokecie PZL-104 WILGA 80
WSK-PZL Warzawaokecie PZL-104 WILGA 80 · Accident en route
From Private Ranch to Colorado City Airport (KT88)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA064
- 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
WSK-PZL Warzawaokecie PZL-104 WILGA 80
- Aircraft type
- WSK PZL Warzawaokecie PZL-104
- 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
- N192D
- Operator
- Tailwind Productions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Private RanchTo Colorado City Airport (KT88), Colorado City, TX
- 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 · 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Became lost/disoriented, encountered
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 600-hour private pilot became lost during a 125-nautical mile dead reckoning cross-country flight. Running low on fuel, the pilot elected to land at a ranch. Upon landing, the pilot realized that he was in Mexico, approximately 206 miles south of his intended destination. The pilot quickly departed the ranch and flew in a northerly direction until he spotted a Texas flag. Estimating that he had about 3 gallons of fuel remaining, the pilot elected to land on a gravel road before his remaining fuel was exhausted. While on final approach to the gravel road, the pilot observed a tall fence running parallel to the road and elected to land off the road on rocky and uneven terrain. While landing, the airplane's horizontal stabilizer sustained structural damage following impact with sagebrush and cactus plants. The pilot reported that he did not have a navigational chart on board the airplane, and very strong winds aloft, with speeds up to 65 mph, prevailed throughout the area, forcing his airplane off-course.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and preparation leading to him becoming lost. Contributing factors were the unfavorable winds and the lack of suitable terrain for a precautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA064
- Event ID
- 20060228X00256
- Case number
- DFW06CA064
- 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: 77c4464bcbc4ae1e5b5d995468ecaa9f98937f97dc35cceb11ad65471040eb63; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:07:34.349Z.