CEN11FA247 · Stinson 108
Stinson 108 · Accident: loss of control in flight
From Dickens, TX to Rockdale, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA247
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Stinson 108
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N97383
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dickens, TXTo Rockdale, 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted terrain in night instrument meteorological conditions. There were no known eyewitnesses who saw the takeoff or accident. The wreckage was located in a pasture area of rolling hills by a local resident, approximately 1.25 miles southeast of the departure airfield. Ground scars and the wreckage path led to the main wreckage, which was oriented on a heading of 100 degrees. The pilot was not instrument rated and it was not determined whether he obtained a weather briefing. Although it is uncertain whether he obtained a weather briefing, the conditions on the night of the accident were obviously instrument conditions with overcast skies at 500 feet. The non-instrument rated pilot exhibited poor decision-making when he elected to fly in those conditions. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot's decision to fly in night instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA247
- Event ID
- 20110327X65552
- Case number
- CEN11FA247
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 981826feb7254dcbc2f333c8b97195eaab6acca965bfba14086e51e9d334f36f; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:17:52.779Z.