LAX96LA343 · Aero Commander 690
Aero Commander 690 and Burkhart Grob 102 · Accident: midair collision en route
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA343
- 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
- 0 · 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
Aircraft 1 · Aero Commander 690
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 690
- 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
- N840DC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK), Truckee, CATo Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH), Mammoth Lakes, CA
- 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 · climb to 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · Burkhart Grob 102
- Aircraft type
- Grob 102
- Category
- Glider
- 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
- N22ZB
- Operator
- Soar Truckee
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Juwata International Airport / Suharnoko Harbani AFB (TRK)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
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
- Pilot of other aircraft › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Truckee, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The Aero Commander 690, N840DC, collided with the Grob 102 glider, N22ZB, while climbing through 10,000 feet msl 4 miles south of the airport. The Aero Commander pilot had announced his departure on runway 28 on the unicom frequency of 122.8 Mhz while taxiing. After departing, the pilot turned left and was heading southeast in a climb. The glider had departed the airport about 1 hour earlier via aero tow and was orbiting left in a thermal. The glider pilot was monitoring the frequency 123.3 Mhz, an air-to-air frequency used by glider pilots. Moments before the collision, the Aero Commander pilot was tuning a navigation radio. He looked up and saw the glider in his windshield, but was unable to avoid the collision. The glider pilot never saw the Aero Commander. The left wing of the Aero Commander struck the left wing and fuselage of the glider about 9,800 feet msl. Both pilots were able to safely land their airplanes at the Truckee Airport after the collision.
Probable cause
The inadequate visual lookout by both pilots while in the vicinity of the airport. A factor was that each aircraft was on a different frequency at the time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA343
- Event ID
- 20001208X06780
- Case number
- LAX96LA343
- 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: 4a14ed1bf469bd3e7261de60edea7a1f431bd6feb131ce5760061f00c8444757; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:06:27.107Z.