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DEN91DQA01

1990-11-10 · ALAMOGORDO, New Mexico, United States · Fatal · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport ALM

N51DY has since been reassigned. It is now registered to a different aircraft (PAPA 51 LTD CO THUNDER MUSTANG, built 2005), which was not involved in this event.

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

PARTIAL LOSS OF ENGINE POWER FOR AN UNDETERMINED REASON, IMPROPER PLANNING/DECISION BY THE PILOT, AND THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE AIRSPEED, WHICH RESULTED IN AN INADVERTENT STALL.

Factual narrative

ON THE FIRST FLIGHT OF AN EXPERIMENTAL HOMEBUILT AIRCRAFT, THE PILOT TOOK OFF WITH WHAT NUMEROUS WITNESSES DESCRIBED AS A ROUGH RUNNING ENGINE. THE FLIGHT PATH AFTER TAKEOFF WAS A PATTERN FOR A RETURN TO LANDING FLOWN AT LESS THAN NORMAL PATTERN ALTITUDE. DURING THE TURN TO FINAL, THE AIRCRAFT WAS OBSERVED TO STALL AND ROLL AT APPROXIMATELY 100 FEET ABOVE GROUND LEVEL FOLLOWED BY A STEEP IMPACT. THE AIRCRAFT WAS EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED BY IMPACT AND GROUND FIRE. NO REASON WAS FOUND FOR THE APPARENT LOST OF POWER. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_DEN91DQA01.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

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Related research

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