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Atlas / NTSB / FTW90DQG03

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event FTW90DQG03

1990-06-23 ABILENE, Texas, United States Airport · DYS Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE AIRSPEED, WHILE MANEUVERING AFTER A LOW PASS, WHICH RESULTED IN AN INADVERTENT STALL. THE HIGH DENSITY ALTITUDE WAS A RELATED FACTOR.

Factual narrative

ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, THE PILOT BEGAN HIS AIR SHOW ROUTINE WITH A LOW PASS DOWN THE RUNWAY FROM NORTH TO SOUTH. HE THEN MADE A CLIMBING TURN TO A CLOSE-IN DOWNWIND LEG. AT THE END OF THE DOWNWIND LEG, THE AIRPLANE ENTERED A CLIMBING RIGHT TURN AT WHAT WAS REPORTED TO BE A SLOWER THAT NORMAL SPEED. AFTER ABOUT 90 DEGREES OF TURN, THE ANGLE OF BANK INCREASED RAPIDLY, THE NOSE DROPPED, AND THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE GROUND IN A STEEP DESCENT. A WITNESS REPORTED THE ENGINE WAS NOT DEVELOPING FULL POWER; HOWEVER, THIS COULD NOT BE SUBSTANTIATED. DENSITY ALTITUDE WAS ABOUT 4500 FT. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_FTW90DQG03.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall). 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 ↗