ATL06LA115 · McWhorter Skystar Vixen
McWhorter Skystar Vixen · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Peachtree City Falcon Field (KFFC) to Peachtree City Falcon Field (KFFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06LA115
- 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
McWhorter Skystar Vixen
- Aircraft type
- Mcwhorter SKYSTAR VIXEN
- 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
- N93TR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peachtree City Falcon Field (KFFC), Peachtree City, GATo Peachtree City Falcon Field (KFFC)
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane to level out about 200 feet above the runway on initial takeoff climb. The witness heard a change in engine noise and observed the airplane start a descent and shallow left turn. The airplane started a second left turn with an angle of bank exceeding 45-degrees and the witness described the airspeed of the airplane as slow. The nose of the airplane was observed to pitch up, the left wing dropped down, the airplane entered a left spiral descended out of view and collided with the ground. Examination of the left wing revealed the left wing was pushed aft and the left wing tip was bent upward. The leading edge of the left wing had compression damage from the wing tip extending inboard about four feet. The right wing was accelerated forward. According to the co-owner of the airplane the stall speed of the airplane is 52 mph. The engine was removed, examined, and placed in a test cell for an engine run. The engine was started, ran and developed power with stepped increases in engine rpm. The throttle was returned to the idle position for cool down, and the engine was shut down.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering to reverse his direction following loss of engine power shortly after takeoff resulting in an inadvertent stall and collision with the ground. A factor in the accident was a loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06LA115
- Event ID
- 20060804X01088
- Case number
- ATL06LA115
- 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. 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: 1f1d8dbf6c4d0a805d6a6887e39e50923769575111f0e9dbff90e6957112090c; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:06:23.507Z.