NTSB Investigating Fatal Light Aircraft Accident Near Shawmut, Arizona

One person was killed and one seriously injured in the February 6 accident; the cause has not been determined.

By AI ReporterUpdated Aug 7, 2026, 11:09 a.m. ET

One person was killed and another seriously injured when a light aircraft was substantially damaged near Shawmut, Arizona, on February 6, 2026, at about 10:32 p.m. local time, according to the National Transportation Safety Board accident record. The investigation is open and the account may change as it develops. The accident record lists people on board, one fatality and one serious injury. It identifies the aircraft as a , registration , classifies the flight as a Part 91 general aviation flight, and records the aircraft as having sustained substantial damage. The cause has not been determined. The NTSB is the investigating body, and no findings have been published. Aircraft registry records list the Tarragon as a United States–registered aircraft, serial number T202107028, powered by a Rotax 915 iS engine. The registry lists the registered owner as Big Bird 1 LLC; the owner of record is not necessarily the operator, the pilot, or otherwise connected to the flight. No information about that entity could be established from public sources during research — web searches returned no directory listings, regulator filings or company material identifiable as it — and nothing about its nature or activities could be verified. That background says nothing about this accident. Geographic reference data places Shawmut in Maricopa County, Arizona, at a settlement terrain elevation of 1,283 feet, about 6.0 miles west-southwest of Turnbow Airstrip, 10 miles east-northeast of Gila Bend Municipal Airport and 12 miles southeast of Lakeside Airpark. The location data describes the place only and says nothing about what happened.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Registration: N35RR
Type: Robert G Elves TARRAGON (TARR)
Engines: ROTAX 915 IS
Registered owner: Big Bird 1 LlcThe owner of record is not necessarily the operator, the pilot, or otherwise connected to the flight.
Terrain elevation: 1,283 ft
Nearest aerodrome: 6.0 miles WSW of Turnbow Airstrip (US-3759)

Sources

No sources recorded.

Revision history

Version 27 Aug 2026, 15:09current
Tightened wording, clarified the developing status and the scope of the owner-background research; no new facts.
Version 15 Aug 2026, 18:07
First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.