CEN12LA331 · Baldwin SKYBOLT
Baldwin SKYBOLT · Accident: loss of lift during takeoff
From Stuttgart, AR (private airstrip) to Stuttgart Municipal Airport / Carl Humphrey Field (SGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA331
- 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
Baldwin SKYBOLT
- Aircraft type
- Baldwin SKYBOLT
- 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
- N24EB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stuttgart, AR (private airstrip)To Stuttgart Municipal Airport / Carl Humphrey Field (SGT), Stuttgart, AR
- 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 lift
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and a passenger departed in an experimental amateur-built airplane from a private airstrip with a higher-than-standard density altitude. The pilot was unable to maintain a positive rate of climb during the takeoff and turned back toward the airport. The airplane subsequently impacted rough terrain, and a postimpact ground fire occurred. Postaccident calculations revealed that the airplane’s gross weight for the accident flight exceeded its maximum gross weight. The pilot reported no airplane mechanical malfunctions, and postaccident examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning, which resulted in the airplane’s overweight takeoff from an airstrip with a high density altitude and subsequent collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA331
- Event ID
- 20120530X61540
- Case number
- CEN12LA331
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-05-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 321a40e0bc7629b3940d2466e869b683bf7c6dd18b5ba4b39d3536feaa912ee1; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:19:56.146Z.