LAX94LA160 · American Champion (ACAC) 8KCAB
American Champion (ACAC) 8KCAB · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From E14 · Avra Valley, AZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA160
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
American Champion (ACAC) 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- American Champion (acac) 8
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N189AC
- Operator
- Michael P. Ilyin · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From E14 · Avra Valley, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Pull-up, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident was witnessed by several International Aerobatic Club judges, who were grading the pilot's aerobatic routine. The pilot performed the 1994 Intermediate Known Sequence, which was to be followed by a hammerhead turn course reversal to include a 1/4 roll on the up line and a 1/4 roll on the down line. After the hammerhead turn, the aircraft was descending on the vertical line and the witnesses did not see the pilot attempt to pull out until very near the ground when a 10- to 15-degree attitude change was noted. The witnesses said the engine continued at near full power throughout the maneuver to ground impact. All of the aircraft components were accounted for in the wreckage path. The entire flight control system was documented, with no discrepancies noted.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed pullout from a vertical aerobatic maneuver for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA160
- Event ID
- 20001206X00931
- Case number
- LAX94LA160
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8d88ca16943f54ccfe1914f4d99a5e8aafc1a727194f36249fdd9033e17655f6; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:13:33.299Z.