El Paso - El Paso

On December 11, 1983 at 02:15 PM, El Paso - El Paso experienced a crash involving Vickers Varsity, operated by West Texas Air Museum, with the event recorded near El Paso-West Texas Texas.

The flight was categorized as positioning and the reported phase was landing (descent or approach) at a airport (less than 10 km from airport) crash site.

2 people were known to be on board, 0 fatalities were recorded, 2 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 0.0%.

Crew on board: 2, crew fatalities: 0, passengers on board: 0, passenger fatalities: 0, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is human factor. The aircraft was on a flight from the El Paso Intl Airport to the West Texas Airport. A hard landing was made causing all three landing gear to collapse, folded the left wing aft just inboard of the engine and twisted the entire right wing about 30° leading edge down. According to the pilot the aircraft was flown with 30° of flaps on downwind and 47° of flaps on base. He also reported that both airspeed indicators were stuck at 110 knots. According to photographs taken by an unidentified party, the flaps were in the up position in the pattern and during touchdown. Touchdown was made with the right main gear off the right side of the rwy. The aircraft wheel track is only 4 feet less than the width of the runway. The pilot did not have a type rating nor authorization in lieu of a type rating for the 15 minutes ferry flight. The pilot had 4,140 hours copilot time in the aircraft, during which he had never landed the aircraft.

Aircraft reference details include registration N65338, year of manufacture 1953.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 32.7449°, -97.3411°.