CEN11FA300 · Dahlman-Dower Tailwind W-8
Dahlman-Dower Tailwind W-8 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB) to Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL)
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
- CEN11FA300
- 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
- 1 · 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
Dahlman-Dower Tailwind W-8
- Aircraft type
- Dahlman Dower TAILWIND W-8
- 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
- N7804C
- Operator
- Lazzarini Arthur A.
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, COTo Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL), Liberal, KS
- 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 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot’s in-flight weather briefing indicated that instrument meteorological conditions, including low ceilings, were forecast for the area. He then contacted the nearest Air Route Traffic Control Center and requested an instrument clearance to a nearby airport. The controller offered to vector the pilot for an instrument landing system, very-high frequency omnidirectional radio range, or area navigation/global positioning system approach to that airport, but the pilot said he was having gyro problems. The pilot said he would divert to a visual flight rules (VFR) airport. Radio and radar contacts were then lost. A postaccident examination of the wreckage at the scene indicated that the airplane struck the shoulder of a road in an inverted, nose-down attitude. The only navigational charts found at the accident scene were a bound VFR chart atlas. No instrument flight rules charts were found. A further examination of the airplane showed that the airplane was equipped with basic VFR instrumentation only. Analysis of radar data revealed that the airplane made three turns: two tight left turns followed by a wide right turn. These turns took place in the last few minutes of flight and were consistent with a spiraling descent.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to attempt flight into instrument meteorological conditions in an airplane that was equipped for flight in visual meteorological conditions only, which resulted in the pilot’s spatial disoriented and loss of control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA300
- Event ID
- 20110421X53940
- Case number
- CEN11FA300
- 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: a0de91dbaf1db7027c8ec196b445bc9585ff17e33f097b92e43c236fe17bf44c; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:20:28.640Z.