ERA09LA388 · Christen Industries Inc PITTS S-2B
Christen Industries Inc PITTS S-2B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Panola County Airport (PMU) to Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA388
- 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 Inc PITTS S-2B
- Aircraft type
- Christen PITTS S-2B
- 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
- N113DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Panola County Airport (PMU), Batesville, MSTo Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA), Millington, TN
- 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
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of aerobatic airplane departed an airport located about 16 miles from the accident site with approximately 18 gallons of fuel on board. He had completed several aerobatic maneuvers and was in a turn when the engine began to sputter and subsequently lost power. The airplane then descended at a 45-degree angle until it impacted trees, and came to rest in a heavily wooded area. Evidence of a fuel spill was present at the accident site. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal evidence of pre-impact malfunctions. At the time of the accident, the airplane had been operated for about 750 total hours, and about 40 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed 8 months earlier.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power while maneuvering (after performing aerobatics) for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA388
- Event ID
- 20090708X43028
- Case number
- ERA09LA388
- 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: 1a81b4a55b256a103068cd76ef317c03ddf5e875ddee6bed095f2e5935ed464c; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:44:55.999Z.