CEN14LA433 · Sutton William J STITS PLAYMATE SA11A
Sutton William J STITS PLAYMATE SA11A · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Bridgeport Municipal Airport (KXBP) to Hicks Air Field (T67)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA433
- 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
Sutton William J STITS PLAYMATE SA11A
- Aircraft type
- Sutton William STITS PLAYMATE SA11A
- 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
- N76WS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bridgeport Municipal Airport (KXBP), Bridgeport, TXTo Hicks Air Field (T67), Hicks Airfield, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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
After refueling the airplane, the pilot observed that the wind direction at the airport had changed about 90 degrees from when he had arrived about 30 minutes earlier. The pilot reported that the wind was now 8 to 10 mph and varying from 050 to 090 degrees, so he chose runway 36 for departure. When the airplane was about 10 to 15 ft above the ground, it made a descending left turn. The pilot stayed in the traffic pattern and then landed on the runway. The pilot checked the flight controls, and they appeared to respond correctly. He departed again, and, after becoming airborne, the airplane made another descending left turn. The airplane did not respond to the pilot's control inputs, so he reduced power and landed in the grass near the runway. The airplane slid across a taxiway and impacted a tree and fence at the airport perimeter. Aileron control continuity was established with no abnormalities noted. The airport's automated weather reporting station reported calm wind and lightning in the distance south of the airport about the time of departure. Based on the events, it's likely that, during the takeoff, the airplane encountered rapidly changing wind conditions due to a nearby storm.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of airplane control during takeoff after encountering rapidly changing wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA433
- Event ID
- 20140815X55459
- Case number
- CEN14LA433
- 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: ada877175967de63f4b2fa657afa04990f35e0a6d0a7513b0538730c4bee5ecd; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:39:01.390Z.