DFW07FA008 · North American T-28C
North American T-28C · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS) to LKC · Lake Charles, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07FA008
- 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
North American T-28C
- Aircraft type
- North American T-28
- 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
- N470
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), St. Louis, ILTo LKC · Lake Charles, LA
- 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
- 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; 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot departed on a long cross-country flight in his single-engine experimental airplane that just had an overhauled engine installed. Prior to departure, he purchased 100 gallons of fuel but did not obtain a weather briefing or file a flight plan. While en route, as day turned into night, the pilot, who was receiving flight following services from air traffic control (ATC), announced to ATC that he needed to divert to another airport that was 40 miles south of his position for fuel. He also stated that he needed to descend to a lower altitude. A review of ATC and weather radar data revealed that as the airplane proceeded toward this airport, he flew through an area of light to moderate rain activity. Radar data revealed that the airplane unexpectedly initiated a left turn toward the east-northeast and disappeared from radar. According to the last 60 seconds of radar data, the airplane made several climbs and descents and the ground speed decelerated from 173 knots to 113 knots before the data ended. The airplane came to rest in a heavily wooded terrain on a heading of 331 degrees, approximately 2 miles northwest of the last radar return and approximately 16 miles southeast of another airport that offered fuel services. The airplane impacted terrain in a near vertical descent, and the entire engine assembly, including two propeller blades, were imbedded about 8-10 feet into the ground. There was no evidence of a fuel spill at the accident site. The airplane was reported to have a fuel endurance range of 2.5 hours. Examination of the airplane did not reveled any pre mishap deficiencies with the airframe or the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane which led to an aerodynamic stall. A contributing factor was the dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07FA008
- Event ID
- 20061108X01624
- Case number
- DFW07FA008
- 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 2006-10-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f5fc49373895a63bd929e18c951f82058fc6a3050abbd88b2e03a101c771d4b4; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:01:06.873Z.