NYC08FA155 · SIAI-Marchetti SF-260
Ace Aviation SIAI-Marchetti SF-260 · Accident: loss of visual reference while maneuvering
From Belfast Municipal Airport (BST) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08FA155
- 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
SIAI-Marchetti SF-260
- Aircraft type
- Siai Marchetti SF-260
- 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
- N601RH
- Operator
- Ace Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Belfast Municipal Airport (BST), Belfast, METo 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 · aerobatics
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Just after departure from the airport, the airplane was observed by several witnesses performing a "lazy barrel roll" over a bay. After the first "barrel roll" the airplane was observed starting to perform a climb toward an overcast cloud layer. One eyewitness observed the airplane begin a second maneuver and as it was "still upside down," the nose of the airplane pointed down to the water and disappeared from view. Another eyewitness had turned his back when he assumed the airplane was going into the overcast cloud layer; however, he and several other witnesses heard the "loudest bang" that sounded similar to an engine "back fire." Due to the depths of the water and the size of the debris area, the airplane was not recovered; however, the wreckage was video-taped on the bottom of the bay. Deformation of the wing spars indicated positive high g-loading just prior to impact. The Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular 60-4A states in part, "Surface references and the natural horizon may at times become obscured, although visibility may be above visual flight rule minimums. Lack of natural horizon or surface reference is common on overwater flights…" Witness accounts of the accident suggest the pilot became disoriented while performing the aerobatic maneuvers over the water and in proximity to the clouds.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation during an aerobatic maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA155
- Event ID
- 20080425X00546
- Case number
- NYC08FA155
- 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, 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: 0f7245fe86d716fdb8ccaf93fc632464c47015c95ca5aac5f4e15ce29197f2de; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:02:50.763Z.