DFW08CA203 · Collard Dragonfly
Collard Dragonfly · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Big Spring Mc Mahon-Wrinkle Airport (BPG) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA203
- 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
Collard Dragonfly
- Aircraft type
- Collard DRAGONFLY
- 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
- N793TW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Spring Mc Mahon-Wrinkle Airport (BPG), Big Spring, TXTo 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported departing the airport in "challenging wind and [thermal] conditions." An automated weather reporting facility on the airport reported winds 50 degrees from runway heading at 11 knots gusting to 19 knots. After six successful touch-and-gos, the pilot entered the traffic pattern for a seventh approach. While turning base to final the pilot experienced a loss of aircraft control and impacted terrain. The pilot reported that dust devils were "prevalent in the area at that time."
Probable cause
Loss of aircraft control due to inadvertent penetration of a dust devil.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA203
- Event ID
- 20080912X01444
- Case number
- DFW08CA203
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 39a8da54e560a82b85df78f3c51bd9de0dbf02a9db244890b7121a75a636b822; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:12:14.660Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Misspelled city name; BPG is Big Spring McMahon-Wrinkle Airport, Big Spring, TX.