WPR13FA123 · Avions Fairey TIPSY NIPPER T-66
Sharman Enterprises Avions Fairey TIPSY NIPPER T-66 · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
From Yolo County Davis Woodland Winters Airport (DWA) to Nut Tree Airport (VCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13FA123
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Avions Fairey TIPSY NIPPER T-66
- Aircraft type
- Avions Fairey TIPSY NIPPER T-66
- 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
- N1959N
- Operator
- Sharman Enterprises
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yolo County Davis Woodland Winters Airport (DWA), Davis/Winters, CATo Nut Tree Airport (VCB), Vacaville, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1959)
- 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 · 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 structures
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight about 2,000 feet above the ground when several witnesses reported hearing a loud "crack," "pop," or "snap" sound and then looking up and seeing something separate from the airplane and then pieces falling to the ground. The outboard 4 feet of the right wing was found about 2,000 feet away from the main wreckage, and a turkey vulture carcass was found near the wing section. Postaccident examinations of the wing section revealed blood spots and a downy barbule, which was identified as a fragment of a turkey vulture feather.
Probable cause
The airplane's impact with a turkey vulture in cruise flight, which resulted in the structural failure of the right wing and the subsequent loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13FA123
- Event ID
- 20130213X15321
- Case number
- WPR13FA123
- 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 2013-02-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8f1a8c7711fdd41232220c667c6ae20179b9e9b61078335cbaad1c29564dc672; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:52:54.759Z.