Bill Whittington plane crash
Global Air Swearingen SA226-T(B) · Engine failure, loss of control
From Scottsdale Airport (SDL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21FA175
- 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
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 2
- Survivors
- 0
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Swearingen SA226-T(B)
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N59EZ
- Operator
- Global Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
William Marvin Whittington (September 11, 1949 – April 23, 2021) was an American racing driver from Lubbock, Texas, who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and competed five times in the Indianapolis 500.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Bill Whittington” (revision 1366560122, 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 pilot was conducting a personal flight and was descending the airplane to the destination airport. Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data showed that the airplane accomplished several turning maneuvers near the airport. These turns occurred from an elevation of 6,000 to 4,950 ft mean sea level, at which time the data ended. The airplane was 80 ft above ground level at the time. Witnesses reported seeing a low-flying airplane perform a turn and then veer toward the ground. The airplane came to rest about 4 miles east of the destination airport and 70 ft from the last data target. A postcrash fire ensued. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engines found no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Examination of the left engine revealed that the engine was likely producing power. The right engine examination revealed damage consistent with low or no rotation at the time of the accident, including distinct, localized contact marks on the rotating propeller shaft. In addition, no metal spray was found in the turbine section, and no dirt was found within the combustor section. The examination of the right propeller blades showed chordwise scoring with the blades bent aft and twisted toward a low-pitch setting. Examination of the fuel system noted no anomalies. The airplane was equipped with a single redline (SRL) autostart computer. Examination of the right (R) SRL-OFF annunciator panel light bulb showed signatures of hot filament stretch, which was consistent with illumination of the light at the time of the accident. The SRL light normally extinguishes above an engine speed of 80% rpm. Given the low rotational signatures on the right engine and the illuminated “R SRL OFF” warning light, it is likely that the right engine lost engine power during the flight for reasons that could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power to the right engine for reasons that could not be determined. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Bill Whittington
- Article
- Bill Whittington
- Revision
- 1366560122 · 2026-07-28 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q862656
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record WPR21FA175
- Event ID
- 20210424102972
- Case number
- WPR21FA175
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Bill Whittington" (page 5109169, revision 1366560122); merged with NTSB case WPR21FA175 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record WPR21FA175: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record WPR21FA175
- Map position
- NTSB record WPR21FA175: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record WPR21FA175: 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 WPR21FA175: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- NTSB record WPR21FA175: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record WPR21FA175: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Bill Whittington" and NTSB case WPR21FA175, 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, 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.