2010 Austin suicide attack
Stack Joseph A Piper PA-28-236 · Suicide attack due to anger to IRS policies
From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (KGTU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA124
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
- Not recorded
Piper PA-28-236
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N2889D
- Operator
- Stack Joseph A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (KGTU)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Other
- 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
- Security/criminal event
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on February 18, 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single-engine Piper Dakota plane into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, United States, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) manager Vernon Hunter. Thirteen others were injured, two severely so. The four-story office building housed an IRS field office occupying the top three floors, along with a couple of private businesses on the first floor. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note to his website, expressing his disillusionment with corporations and government agencies such as the IRS. Stack is also suspected of having set fire that morning to his two-story North Austin house, which was mostly destroyed.
In the aftermath, there was increased debate over the policies of the IRS and different forms of protest. In response to the attack, the IRS spent more than $38.6 million, with $6.4 million spent to recover and resume work at the building, and over $32 million spent to increase security at other IRS sites in the U.S. An official audit would later determine that the review was badly mismanaged and extremely inefficient. The building was repaired by December 2011.
Events
About an hour before the crash, Stack allegedly set fire to his $230,000 house located on Dapplegrey Lane in North Austin; the house was mostly destroyed in the fire. He then drove to a hangar he rented at Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 mi to the north. He boarded his single-engine Piper PA-28 Dakota airplane and took off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time. He indicated to the control tower his flight would be "going southbound, sir." After taking off, his last broadcast words were "thanks for your help; have a great day."
About ten minutes later, his plane descended and collided at full speed with Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion. The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).
Text from the Wikipedia article “2010 Austin suicide attack” (revision 1373828090, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed after the pilot intentionally flew it into the side of an office building in Austin, Texas. The private pilot and an employee who worked in the building were killed. As this event was an intentional act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation assumed jurisdiction and control of the investigation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s intentional flight into a building.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: 2010 Austin suicide attack
- Article
- 2010 Austin suicide attack
- Revision
- 1373828090 · 2026-09-08 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q2422134
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record CEN10FA124
- Event ID
- 20100218X33746
- Case number
- CEN10FA124
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "2010 Austin suicide attack" (page 26255583, revision 1373828090); merged with NTSB case CEN10FA124 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record CEN10FA124: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record CEN10FA124
- Map position
- NTSB record CEN10FA124: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record CEN10FA124: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record CEN10FA124: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- NTSB record CEN10FA124: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record CEN10FA124: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2010 Austin suicide attack" and NTSB case CEN10FA124, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- 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.