NYC08CA097 · Christen Industries Eagle II
Christen Industries Eagle II · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Boone Inc Airport (NC14) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA097
- 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
Christen Industries Eagle II
- Aircraft type
- Christen EAGLE
- 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
- N712RP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boone Inc Airport (NC14), Boone, NCTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the Christen Eagle II said he was "lined up well," for the runway but just prior to landing, the left wing struck trees, and the airplane impacted the ground near the runway threshold. The airplane came to rest inverted, and even though it was upside down, and the pilot had difficulty releasing the canopy, he was able to exit the airplane unassisted. Photographic evidence indicated that the trees were located approximately 80 feet prior to the threshold, with tops approximately 20 feet above the runway elevation. The runway threshold was not displaced, and the presence of the trees was not included in the commercially available obstacle notation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance/altitude while on the final leg of the traffic pattern. Contributing to the accident were the proximity of the trees to the threshold, and the lack of a displaced threshold.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA097
- Event ID
- 20080322X00368
- Case number
- NYC08CA097
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 1eca9d8e1ba5f0a490cf86988f415e584a309aea91f14a285f35a8a3b1f05283; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:27:30.762Z.