CEN12FA572 · Eberle John S FOKKER DR-1 TRIPLANE
Eberle John S FOKKER DR-1 TRIPLANE · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Centennial Airport (APA) to Platte Valley Airpark (18V)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12FA572
- 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
Eberle John S FOKKER DR-1 TRIPLANE
- Aircraft type
- Eberle John FOKKER DR-1 TRIPLANE
- 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
- N152RB
- Operator
- Andrew J Parks · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo Platte Valley Airpark (18V), Fort Lupton, CO
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 › Task performance
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 departed the airport, made a left turn to the east, and climbed to an altitude of 6,700 feet mean sea level (msl) at a groundspeed of about 93 knots. About 5 minutes after departing the airport, the airplane initiated a left descending turn and disappeared off radar. Two witnesses who lived near the accident site heard the airplane approach. One witness said the engine sounded normal. As they went outside to see the airplane, the witnesses saw the airplane go over their house at a low altitude, and one witness went to the back of the house to continue to watch the airplane. After he got to the back of his house, the witness saw the airplane in a tight left descending spiral in about a 45-degree nose-down pitch angle.
A postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. A review of weather conditions at the time of the accident revealed that the density altitude was about 8,250 feet. The elevation at the accident site was 6,170 feet msl. The high density altitude would have reduced the airplane’s climb performance by about 67 percent, which could explain the airplane’s reduced climb performance. When the pilot was interviewed 7 months after the accident occurred, he said he could not recall anything that occurred on the day of the accident. However, 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 loss of control of the airplane due to the airplane’s reduced climb performance during high density altitude operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12FA572
- Event ID
- 20120826X71001
- Case number
- CEN12FA572
- 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: d903f05d03218b45978a15faedee12f4c5a62f18e59315e9b7d4bb714973fba9; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:30:45.778Z.