CEN11LA421 · Ultralight America SPITFIRE II
Ultralight America SPITFIRE II · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Ranger Municipal Airport (F23) to Ranger Municipal Airport (F23)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA421
- 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
- 2 · 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
Ultralight America SPITFIRE II
- Aircraft type
- Ultralight America SPITFIRE
- 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
- N6524R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ranger Municipal Airport (F23), Ranger, TXTo Ranger Municipal Airport (F23), Ranger, 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot, who owned the airplane, and the pilot-rated passenger, who was a prospective airplane buyer, departed for a local flight. A witness observed the airplane stall shortly after takeoff, and the airplane descended into a tree and then the ground. A postimpact fire ensued. An examination of the airframe, engine, and related systems revealed no evidence of preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The density altitude was calculated to be 3,921 feet, and the accident site elevation was 1,473 feet mean sea level. It was not possible to determine what effect the medications that were detected in the student pilot’s system (which ranged from over-the-counter cold/hay fever medications to anticonvulsants and anti-inflammatory agents) may have had on his performance if he was flying the airplane. Regardless of which pilot was operating the airplane at the time of the accident, it is likely that the airplane stalled as a result of reduced airspeed and climb performance while operating at a high density altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain sufficient airspeed during the initial climb after a takeoff in high density altitude conditions, which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA421
- Event ID
- 20110627X90719
- Case number
- CEN11LA421
- 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: 8ed415983148afd4867290da549d1831d6ce4c45574b2dcf87cda6c9ad75b736; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:29:10.390Z.