MIA97LA245 · Louttit CELEBRITY
Louttit CELEBRITY · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From 3J1 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA245
- 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
Louttit CELEBRITY
- Aircraft type
- Louttit CELEBRITY
- 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
- N729BL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3J1To 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 · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Wing, spar › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While maneuvering the airplane through aerobatic loops, and after completing five successfully, the pilot said he was at the bottom of the sixth loop when he heard a 'loud noise.' He then saw the top fabric was ripped aft, and he could see the fabric aft of the trailing edge. He turned the airplane towards the airport in attempt to land on runway 03. The pilot stated that it took full engine power to maintain a 1,500 feet per minute rate of descent. He intended to land on the grass on the side of the runway, but could not make the field and was forced to land in a swamp with overgrown with vines, and 4 to 5 feet deep water. There was a 'G' meter on the airplane and the pilot said during the loop the meter was indicating 3.4. The meter was rated at 4.0 and was tested at 6.0. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the wood forward of both upper wing spars had failed.
Probable cause
the in-flight failure of the upper wing spar wood resulting in a forced landing in swampy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA245
- Event ID
- 20001208X08900
- Case number
- MIA97LA245
- 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: d58e3cd43032ebdbd8d97e0b6b74fff986217bb8be2c5c5f326543540f0c2168; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:37:05.530Z.