MIA96LA074 · Yakovlev YAK-52
Yakovlev YAK-52 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From 1X4 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA074
- 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
Yakovlev YAK-52
- Aircraft type
- Yakovlev YAK-52
- 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
- N77YK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1X4To 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 › Altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness stated that the airplane was observed on a low pass down the runway at about 900 to 1,000 feet. The pilot then made three barrel rolls and lost altitude on all three rolls. The pilot remained in a closed traffic pattern and made a second pass down the runway at about 100 to 200 feet. The airplane was observed to enter a pull-up and a barrel roll to the left. According to information from witness reports, when the airplane was at the 90-degree point, it entered a descent and crashed into the ground. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of a precrash failure or malfunction. The pilot had limited experience performing aerobatic flight, and he had only about 6 hours of flight time in this make and model of airplane. A colleague observed that when the pilot performed barrel roll maneuvers on previous flights, the airplane was 'dishing out and losing . . . altitude on a regular basis.' The colleague said that he had 'informed' the pilot that he should obtain some dual instruction. A toxicology test of the pilot's blood showed an alcohol level of 0.10%.
Probable cause
Pilot impairment of judgment and performance due to alcohol, his resultant improper planning/decision, and his failure to maintain sufficient altitude above the terrain while performing an aerobatic maneuver. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's lack of experience in the make and model of airplane, and his lack of experience in the type of operation (aerobatic flight).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA074
- Event ID
- 20001208X05295
- Case number
- MIA96LA074
- 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: 9345bff0bd09f93be49c410d247c87a7d67c6dea50586ef623ac3cec199bd5b5; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:26:30.665Z.