DEN06FA115 · Stallings VariEze
Stallings VariEze · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From 2V2 · Longmont, CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06FA115
- 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
Stallings VariEze
- Aircraft type
- Stallings VARIEZE
- 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
- N23HS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2V2 · Longmont, COTo 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aerobatics, performed
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The two commercial pilots told a friend they were going to practice aerobatics, specifically, "loops and rolls." A witness, located two miles south of the accident site, saw the airplane fly over at low altitude. Another witness saw the airplane "spiraling in." A third witness saw the airplane making lateral "S" maneuvers before diving to the ground. All three witnesses said the airplane was at low altitude. A digital camera recovered from the wreckage showed four video clips of the pilot performing aerobatic maneuvers (rolls). An on-board GPS unit recorded the airplane's flight path from takeoff to accident. The last 1:30 minutes of the flight was expanded for examination. The last data point showed the airplane's ground speed as 68 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional aerobatics performed at low altitude, and his failure to maintain clearance from terrain. A contributing factor was the pilot's poor judgment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06FA115
- Event ID
- 20060905X01289
- Case number
- DEN06FA115
- 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 2006-08-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 50d4d15999a041df27d61092a110d1c4641aeabc8389789146d352b8080fdae1; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:05:09.388Z.