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Atlas / NTSB / FTW79FPD37

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event FTW79FPD37

1979-08-22 WICHITA FALLS, Texas, United States None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Historical record (pre-1982)

NTSB recorded this accident in the pre-1982 coded-field schema — structured fields rather than free-text narrative. Decoded codes use established NTSB single-letter taxonomies; cause factors remain verbatim pending the Form 6120.4 codebook lookup.

Aircraft

CESSNA 140 · N89445

Damage

Substantial

Craft type

Airplane

Classification

Accident

Light condition

Dawn

Weather

VMC

Phase of flight

Takeoff — initial climb (C1)

Operator type

D

Airport

WICHITA VALLEY

Kind of flying

B0

Weather at impact

Sky

CLEAR

Temp

86° F

Aircraft history

Serial number

000000008477

Total time

3,572 hrs

Pilot

Certificate

Commercial

Total hours

1,462

Age

32

Probable cause (from PRE1982.MDB)

CE & NO INDEX IN OFF,LEFT OR RGT POSITION.

Investigator remarks

FUEL SELECTOR HANDLE ROTATED FREELY W/O RESISTAN

Cause factors

  • 64/C/01 C
    PILOT IN COMMAND ATTEMPTED OPERATION W/KNOWN DEFICIENCIES IN EQUIPMENT Cause
  • 68/C/D6 C
    PERSONNEL INADEQUATE MAINTENANCE AND INSPECTION Cause
  • 74/C/CC C
    POWERPLANT SELECTOR VALVES Cause
  • 88/C/BQ C
    MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS EXCESSIVE-WEAR/PLAY Cause
  • 88/C/96 C
    MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS FUEL STARVATION Cause
  • 88/L/91 L
    MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS TOUCH AND GO LANDING
  • 83/K/A K
    TERRAIN WET,SOFT GROUND Joint factor
  • 83/K/F K
    TERRAIN ROUGH/UNEVEN Joint factor

Decoded against the NTSB Form 6120.4 cause-factor codebook (ct_Pre1982 table). Each row shows the raw triplet, modifier (Cause / Factor / etc.), category, and specific code.

Source: NTSB pre-1982 historical archive. Docket 3 2916. Source file NTSB_1979_3_2916.txt. Modern CAROL record on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type. Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗