WPR21FA170 · Consolidated Vultee BT-13A
Consolidated Vultee BT-13A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21FA170
- 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
Consolidated Vultee BT-13A
- Aircraft type
- Consolidated Vultee BT-13
- 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
- N53331
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2), Hood River, ORTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 80 years (built 1941)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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 flight instructor was providing recurrent training to the pilot in the tailwheel-equipped airplane. They had completed several takeoffs and landings at a nearby airport before returning to the departure airport. The first approach to the runway resulted in a go-around due to an unstable approach, and following the second approach, the pilot receiving instruction performed a three-point landing. During the landing roll, the airplane veered left and exited the runway, and the pilot applied full power and “immediately pitched up.” The airplane climbed in ground effect to about 30 ft, then entered a left turn, and its bank angle continued to increase before the airplane impacted terrain. The airplane came to rest adjacent to a hangar in a nose-low, near-vertical attitude. The pilot was fatally injured. The instructor added that, although he had been guarding the flight controls, due to the low altitude of the event, he did not have time to react before impact.
Toxicology testing of the pilot receiving instruction detected diphenhydramine, a sedating antihistamine commonly available over the counter in a host of preparations intended to treat cold and allergy symptoms and to induce sleep. The range of levels where effects are expected are above 25 ng/ml, but the drug undergoes significant post-mortem redistribution and levels found in cavity blood likely do not accurately reflect antemortem levels.
Although the pilot receiving instruction could have been impaired somewhat by the effects of a small amount of diphenhydramine in his system, some of those effects would have most likely been overcome by the adrenalin naturally produced in the emergency situation. It is therefore unlikely that the small amount of diphenhydramine contributed to the accident circumstances. The accident is consistent with the pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during an aborted landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during an aborted landing, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21FA170
- Event ID
- 20210422102959
- Case number
- WPR21FA170
- 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, cause areas. 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: 47baf5a6122084ea8d4cc7a3d125146bc41094cd59bffe9c0f9479e4881c6378; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:27:19.011Z.