DFW07CA068 · Fortuna Sonex
Fortuna Sonex · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Hall Miller Municipal Airport (KATA) to Kata
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07CA068
- 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
Fortuna Sonex
- Aircraft type
- Fortuna SONEX
- 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
- N229P
- Operator
- Charles E. Walton · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hall Miller Municipal Airport (KATA), Atlanta, TXTo Kata
- 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 go-around
- 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/mush; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane stalled and collided with trees while maneuvering to avoid trees during a go-around. The pilot reported that while practicing takeoff and landings on runway 33, he determined that he was too high on the approach and initiated a go-around. The pilot concluded that his 80-horsepower homebuilt airplane was not going to be able to clear the trees at the departure end of the 2,463-foot long, by 150-foot wide turf runway, so he turned the airplane 45-degrees to the left to avoid the trees. The pilot added that while maneuvering, the airplane stalled and collided with trees located about 100 yards west of the runway 33. The airplane came to rest in the inverted position at the base of the trees, resulting in structural damage to the wings and the fuselage. The canopy was also damaged. There was no fire. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector who responded to the accident site noted that runway 15/33 is not annotated on the airport diagram thus there was no information about the obstructions present at either end of the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed that resulted in a stall/mush. A contributing factor was the group of trees located near the departure end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07CA068
- Event ID
- 20070403X00356
- Case number
- DFW07CA068
- 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: 9c9eea1360e523d451d255f1fc680567947ba3dabd92402dac0e31dbb4ecae6e; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:02:36.490Z.