CEN13FA259 · Piper PA-25-235
Kevin Kingsley Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Lamar Municipal Airport (LLU) to Lamar Municipal Airport (LLU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA259
- 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
Piper PA-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N82509
- Operator
- Kevin Kingsley
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lamar Municipal Airport (LLU), Lamar, MOTo Lamar Municipal Airport (LLU), Lamar, MO
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was demonstrating proficiency in the airplane and in aerial agricultural application operations, and he had completed about seven takeoffs and landings without any apparent difficulty before the accident. The airplane was then loaded with water for additional practice application passes to a field adjacent to the airport. The pilot departed and completed one pass, after which, the airplane pitched up and rolled into a bank, descended, and impacted a field about 1/2 mile north of the airport. The postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a preimpact failure or malfunction. The pilot initially survived the accident, but died at a local hospital about 1 hour later. Although the autopsy report noted the presence of blunt trauma, the pilot's death was attributed to a cardiac arrhythmia related to coronary atherosclerosis. It is likely that the pilot suffered a sudden cardiac event during the flight, which led to the crash. Although the postmortem toxicology testing revealed the presence of lidocaine, it was most likely from postaccident treatment and, therefore, was not in the pilot's system before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's in-flight loss of control, which was likely due to a sudden cardiac event.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA259
- Event ID
- 20130507X44607
- Case number
- CEN13FA259
- 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: f7ca0292a73eb5629c249ca564dba18cabe69f46ecc0215f2a01573942807769; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:56:33.380Z.