NYC96LA139 · Titan Aircraft TORNADO
Titan Aircraft TORNADO · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Richland Airpark (1NY3) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA139
- 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
Titan Aircraft TORNADO
- Aircraft type
- 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
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richland Airpark (1NY3), NYTo No airport
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The unregistered Titan Tornado, flown by a student pilot/co-owner, was observed on an approach to a private grass strip. A witness reported that as the airplane crossed over a hedge row, the nosed pitched up, and the airplane began to climb. At about 150 feet, the nose of the airplane dropped, and the airplane descended and struck the ground at a 45 degree nose down angle. The airplane had been assembled and flown for about 80 hours by Titan Aircraft, before it was purchased by the pilot as an ultralight with a 10 gallon fuel tank and without an airworthiness certificate. Examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact failure of the airframe or engine. No maintenance records were available for the airplane. The student pilot had received his student pilot certificate in October 1994, and had received about 10 hours of dual instruction. He did not solo, and no record of recent flight experience was available. A purchase agreement revealed that the airplane had been sold as a 'single place, ready to fly, used aircraft as is.'
Probable cause
failure of the student pilot to maintain adequate airspeed, during an apparent go-around, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and subsequent collision with the terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's lack of certification, and inadequate certification/approval of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA139
- Event ID
- 20001208X06335
- Case number
- NYC96LA139
- 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: d80e842af58ca7f1baf25db1b1d46f7a746774a8541309e88d4701e41a76a051; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:17:48.442Z.