CEN20LA131 · Bower Challenger II
Bower Challenger II · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Lettsworth, LA (private airstrip) to Lettsworth, LA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA131
- 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
Bower Challenger II
- Aircraft type
- Bower CHALLENGER
- 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
- N6138Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lettsworth, LA (private airstrip)To Lettsworth, LA (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 1999)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 airplane owner had no flight training or flight experience before the accident flight. He reported that he had planned only to taxi the airplane but that a wind gust caused the airplane to become airborne. He attempted to land several times but was unable to because of the turbulence. During a go-around, he thought the airplane had cleared trees near the flight path, but it was momentarily overcome by turbulence and struck a tree, resulting in substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage and serious injury to the pilot.
The owner reported there were no issues with the airplane’s performance. It is likely the owner/pilot, at least in part, overcontrolled the airplane due to his lack of flight training and experience.
Probable cause
The owner/pilot's inability to maintain control of the airplane due to his lack of training and experience, resulting in a collision with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA131
- Event ID
- 20200323X51009
- Case number
- CEN20LA131
- 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: e321ba58b922fe5c84ab65c068f14516cd80ddd081096ea6ab5f7056a20ffe97; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:21:20.707Z.