CEN19FA022 · Mustang II
Mustang II · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From Erie Municipal Airport (EIK) to Erie Municipal Airport (EIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA022
- 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
- 2 · 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
Mustang II
- Aircraft type
- Mustang II
- 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
- N287BM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, COTo Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Turbulence encounter
- 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
The private pilot and his passenger were returning from a local flight. According to GPS data, the airplane overflew the airport and entered a midfield left downwind leg for the landing runway before turning to the base leg. Multiple witnesses observed the airplane fly at a high speed and a low altitude before it banked sharply, descended toward the ground, and impacted terrain.
The damage to the airplane was consistent with the airplane impacting the ground in a nose-low, wings-level attitude. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operations.
Two AIRMETs that were valid for the accident location and time warned of moderate turbulence and low-level wind shear conditions. Various weather products, including computer model simulations and satellite images, depicted conditions consistent with moderate-to-severe turbulence that were conducive for mountain wave activity near the airport. In addition, multiple pilot reports in the area indicated moderate-to-severe turbulence. The observed wind speeds at the airport directly before and after the accident time were weaker than what was encountered by the accident flight due to the inversion likely staying in place longer at the airport. A weather simulation indicated that the accident airplane was in an area of downdrafts with magnitudes between 200 and 1,000 fpm and updrafts with magnitudes between 300 and 1,500 fpm. The airplane was in an area with horizontal wind magnitudes between 20 and 30 knots.
No evidence indicated that the pilot obtained a weather briefing for the intended route of flight; however, even if the pilot had obtained a weather briefing, no weather products at the time of the accident would have specifically mentioned the potential for mountain wave activity.
The accident flight likely encountered mountain wave and rotor conditions while on final approach to the airport with wind gusting between 30 to 50 knots and updrafts and downdrafts with magnitudes between 500 and 1,500 ft per minute. The pilot was most likely not able to maintain airplane control due to this encounter.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain airplane control following an encounter with mountain wave turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA022
- Event ID
- 20181102X61039
- Case number
- CEN19FA022
- 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: b803f1cc2c8fd0f4dab0c2060b72127aa242f50574926f9295e77cd622d86197; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:50:25.145Z.