LAX95GA334 · Cessna U206G
US Dept Of Agriculture Cessna U206G · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Shafter Airport - Minter Field (MIT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95GA334
- 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
- 2 · 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
Cessna U206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N6355U
- Operator
- U.S. Dept. of Agriculture
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shafter Airport - Minter Field (MIT), Shafter, CATo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was on contract to the USDA to dispense sterile Bullworm moths over selected farm fields. The pilot was required to fly at 500 feet agl and 110 knots. A pilot-rated passenger was carried on this flight so that the pilot could evaluate him for possible employment. Ground witnesses first observed the aircraft in a nose-down attitude spinning through an altitude of 500 feet agl. After two turns the aircraft stopped spinning, but continued descending in a nose-down attitude to ground impact. The aircraft crashed between two planned dispensing points in flat open farm land under VFR conditions with moderate temperatures and mild winds. Both occupants held commercial pilot certificates, were current in the aircraft, and had previously flown together on similar flights. Both pilots sustained hand/arm injuries consistent with control manipulation at impact. Both occupants were found outside the aircraft, the pilot on the right side and the pilot-rated passenger on the left. The aircraft was found to be properly loaded with no evidence found of in-flight mechanical, electrical, or structural failures/malfunctions.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's failure to assure that adequate airspeed was maintained.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95GA334
- Event ID
- 20001207X04516
- Case number
- LAX95GA334
- 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: 04829a62c8150d2d763ede4da356a83898e17bd7c8389974be2845c2440524f7; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:37:24.548Z.