WPR11CA036 · Aerostar Acft Corp OF Texas M20E
Aerostar Acft Corp OF Texas M20E · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Kingman, AZ to Boulder City, NV
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA036
- 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
Aerostar Acft Corp OF Texas M20E
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar Acft Corp Of Texas M20
- 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
- N9614V
- Operator
- Randy Donnarumma
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kingman, AZTo Boulder City, NV
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that shortly after takeoff, he turned to his intended heading and climbed to a predetermined cruise altitude to maintain clearance from terrain during the night visual flight rules cross-country flight. Following an uneventful cruise phase of the flight, the pilot observed what he believed to be his destination airport and initiated a descent. The pilot stated that he was unable to turn on the airport runway lights and decided to continue the descent to the airport's traffic pattern altitude of 4,500 feet mean sea level (msl) while circling the airport. During the second circle and descent, the pilot aborted the descent and began to initiate a climb whereupon the airplane impacted terrain at an elevation of about 5,200 feet msl. The pilot reported that he was surprised when local law enforcement informed him that he was in Seligman, Arizona, instead of his intended destination of Boulder City, Nevada. The pilot reported that there were no pre-impact anomalies with the airplane that would have contributed to the accident and that "all systems were working." The pilot added that prior to the flight; he estimated an approximate heading and altitude needed for the flight to his destination airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain while maneuvering. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight and in-flight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA036
- Event ID
- 20101103X14153
- Case number
- WPR11CA036
- 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: 69de412f5a16647e62dd6ced9ce9ff7b2272919e98313b991a35f8f5a8faf5f5; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:32:12.137Z.