CEN23FA332 · North American AT-6D
Texas Warbirds North American AT-6D · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Wittman Regional Airport (KOSH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA332
- 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
North American AT-6D
- Aircraft type
- North American AT-6
- 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
- N49961
- Operator
- Texas Warbirds
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wittman Regional Airport (KOSH), Oshkosh, WITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 79 years (built 1944)
- 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
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 pilot and passenger departed on a local flight and climbed to an altitude of about 3,900 ft mean sea level (msl) while turning to overfly a local lake. After leveling off, the airplane made a turn to the right, followed by a turn to the left. Performance calculations based on ADS-B and winds aloft data showed that, during the turns, the airplane decelerated, and the calculated load factor increased. The airplane slowed to a speed consistent with its published accelerated stall speed, then entered a rapid descent. A witness reported seeing the airplane in a flat spin to the right that continued until the airplane impacted the water. The airplane was destroyed when it impacted the water. Examination of the airplane, engine, and related systems did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the available information, the pilot likely failed to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering and exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in an inadvertent aerodynamic stall/spin.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering, which resulted in the exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA332
- Event ID
- 20230729192736
- Case number
- CEN23FA332
- 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: 3fec2d3ba0dcfc67519625e759682c2b4d3ee0dd1efe3ef741eff4815bdb1995; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:03:41.444Z.