WPR25FA289 · Murphy SR3500 UNDESIGNAT
Murphy SR3500 UNDESIGNAT · Accident during initial climb
From Kalispell City Airport (S27) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25FA289
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Murphy SR3500 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Murphy SR3500
- 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
- N62ZT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalispell City Airport (S27), Kalispell, MTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 19, 2025, about 1205 mountain daylight time, an experimental amateur built Murphy SR3500, N62ZT, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Bigfork, Montana. The pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to a witness, the tailwheel equipped airplane departed Kalispell City Airport (S27), Kalispell, Montana, about 1130, for a local flight. About 1200, the airplane approached runway 33 at Ferndale Airfield (53U), Bigfork, Montana. According to multiple witnesses at 53U, the airplane bounced twice during a landing attempt on runway 33. About midfield, the airplane was seen rolling out on its main landing gear, with the tail up, and the engine was heard “throttling up.” Near the departure end of runway 33, the airplane was heard climbing out when the engine was heard making a sudden, loud bang and popping sound, then became quiet. The airplane subsequently impacted trees to the right side of runway 33’s overrun area and a post-crash fire ensued. (See figure 1.)
Figure 1. Event sequence at 53U Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane impacted trees at the eastern edge of runway 33’s overrun and came to rest upright, at an elevation of 3,079 ft mean sea level (msl), about 875 ft from the departure end of runway 33. The first identified point of contact (FIPC) was a pine tree that had been topped about 50 ft above ground level (agl), located about 104 ft and on magnetic heading of 177° from the main wreckage. The fuselage was thermally destroyed and oriented on a magnetic heading of 121°, among multiple downed trees. The right wing was located at the base of a tree near the FIPC. The left wing was located to the right of the main wreckage, and the empennage was located about 45 ft beyond, and on a magnetic heading of 050° from the main wreckage. The engine remained attached to the fuselage and was thermally damaged. Outboard segments of both propeller blades were located within the debris path. All major components of the airplane were located throughout the debris path. The wreckage was recovered to a secure location for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25FA289
- Event ID
- 20250919201050
- Case number
- WPR25FA289
- 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: f5711ddb5498fadb6c5ab7b4fd555bada78a9179da71aff4eed8d82eb776ed3c; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:09:07.061Z.