CEN11LA045 · Walker Kenneth SONEX
Walker Kenneth SONEX · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From San Angelo, TX to San Angelo, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA045
- 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
Walker Kenneth SONEX
- Aircraft type
- Walker Kenneth 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
- N234KS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Angelo, TXTo San Angelo, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A private pilot and a student pilot were departing a private airfield when they heard a loud bang. The airplane climbed to 100 to 200 feet above ground level when it began to vibrate. The private pilot, who was operating the airplane, remarked that he did not have control of the airplane. The student pilot recalled that the airplane entered a nose-high left turn prior to ground impact. An examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies. There was no evidence of a material failure to explain the loud noise prior to the accident; the source of the loud noise was not determined. An alcohol screen conducted on a sample of the private pilot's blood revealed a 0.11 percent blood alcohol level.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's impairment due to alcohol.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA045
- Event ID
- 20101101X22429
- Case number
- CEN11LA045
- 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: b2d508e59d99f41768a166085ad76825c22e74d0225c9886bec53f65ec16b723; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:31:51.029Z.