LAX98FA022 · Extra Flugzeugbau EA-300
Extra Flugzeugbau EA-300 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA022
- 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
Extra Flugzeugbau EA-300
- Aircraft type
- Extra EA-300
- 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
- N69BW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Castaic, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot held a low altitude aerobatic waiver issued by the FAA and was demonstrating the aircraft to the second pilot. The accident site is in a designated aerobatic practice area, which has a floor of 1,500 feet agl. Radar data showed returns from a VFR aircraft maneuvering between 1,900 and 3,400 feet agl near the location and time of the accident. The minimum altitude of radar coverage in the area is approximately 2,100 feet agl. Two witnesses thought they were observing a radio controlled model aircraft from their car. The aerobatic aircraft performed a loop and then pulled up into vertical flight. The aircraft stopped pointing straight up, the nose dropped, and then the aircraft entered a nose down, right-hand spiral that continued for 8 to 20 seconds until the aircraft disappeared from sight behind an orchard. One witness reported that the aircraft was 'not up where planes normally fly, it was lower.' The aircraft impacted a dirt road in near vertical, nose down attitude with no evidence of rotation. An aerobatic maneuver sequence card was found in the wreckage; the first three maneuvers were a loop, followed by a hammerhead turn, and then an Immelman. Extensive reconstruction of the aircraft showed no evidence of preimpact failure of the aircraft or flight control system.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the aircraft during an aerobatic maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA022
- Event ID
- 20001208X09048
- Case number
- LAX98FA022
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-10-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c4a7a0b238347e9c5b71fc4498700784ddb817478347573df7831a4b488090c6; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:46:39.261Z.