DFW07FA023 · McCutchan Glasair
McCutchan Glasair · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Mason County Airport (T92) to Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07FA023
- 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
McCutchan Glasair
- Aircraft type
- Mccutchan GLASAIR
- 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
- N606MC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mason County Airport (T92), Mason, TXTo Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL), Mineral Wells, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Total 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, 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 1,000-hour private pilot was returning to his home base from a local flight to another airport when he reported a five-mile and then a two-mile final to runway 31 on the airport's Unicom frequency. The pilot's voice was reported calm and clear, and did not indicate any type of problem. Shortly thereafter, a witness reported observing the airplane moving northwest to southeast, as it was spiraling downward and impacted the ground in a pronounced nose low attitude. During the previous week, the pilot had topped off the airplane's fuel tank at his home base before departing to a distant airport; however, no other refueling records were located among the airports. Examination of the wreckage revealed no blight, stains, or odors of fuel present at the accident site. No rotational signatures were observed on either propeller blade. Wing and header (reserve) fuel tanks were breached. The fuel selector was found in the "header tank" position. All major components of the airplane were accounted for at the accident site, and no preimpact damage or malfunctions of the airplane or its powerplant were observed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during a forced landing, resulting in an inadvertent stall. A factor was the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07FA023
- Event ID
- 20061115X01680
- Case number
- DFW07FA023
- 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: a14b27cfefaefd0ef765191eb24fa652fbfdffcfd23998912ad2c096112d2021; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:59:39.529Z.