LAX94LA207 · Griffin TITAN TORNADO TITAN TORN
Griffin TITAN TORNADO TITAN TORN · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA207
- 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
Griffin TITAN TORNADO TITAN TORN
- Aircraft type
- Griffin TITAN TORNADO
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- James R. Griffin, JR · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses stated that the student pilot, who had no confirmed flight experience, assembled the aircraft on the day of the accident at the airport from a kit of preassembled major components. The pilot told the witnesses that he was going to perform some taxi tests and proceeded to do several taxi runs along the runway. The aircraft was then observed to line up on the runway, add what was described as full power, then takeoff. The witnesses said the aircraft leveled off about 30 feet above the runway and flew down the complete length of the pavement. Past the departure end of the runway, the aircraft abruptly pitched nose down and impacted the ground about 1,000 feet from the runway end. An FAA inspector reported that control system continuity was established throughout the aircraft during his examination. The witnesses reported that the engine sounds were consistent and strong up to the point of ground impact. A review of FAA system records revealed no evidence of a registration or airworthiness certificate application by the pilot.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the aircraft. A factor in the accident was his complete lack of any flight experience or instruction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA207
- Event ID
- 20001206X01316
- Case number
- LAX94LA207
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-05-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9c0062a11d9c6e8aa55a9feb2de6e87b7b279870ac29229ce7a44cf795160f7f; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:10:39.376Z.