NYC99FA033 · Gulfstream American AA-1
Gulfstream American AA-1 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From 5B3 · Danielson, CT to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99FA033
- 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
Gulfstream American AA-1
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream American AA-1
- 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
- N6166L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 5B3 · Danielson, CTTo 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
- 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
- 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/spin
- 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(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Brooklyn, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot, formerly commercial-rated, took off, maintained a level flight attitude for about 5 seconds, then put the airplane into a steep climb. A witness then heard the engine 'cut out' and saw the airplane in a steep left bank, rapidly losing altitude. During the descent, the witness heard several backfires. The airplane leveled its wings, but continued a 25-degree descent as it disappeared below a tree line. It crashed into a shallow river, next to which, was a large field. The empennage stuck out of the water at a 40-degree angle, and was buckled on the right side. There was a strong smell of auto gas, though the airplane had no STC for its use. One propeller blade was embedded in the riverbed, with scratches emanating from the leading edge at varying angles. The other propeller blade exhibited S-bending , severe leading edge pitting, and chordwise and lengthwise scratching. Examination of the engine did not disclose evidence of mechanical malfunction. The student pilot's commercial license was permanently revoked in 1996, after he was observed flying during a suspension. He had about 10 hours of flight time since starting to fly again, about a week earlier.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane, resulting in an inadvertent stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99FA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X11618
- Case number
- NYC99FA033
- 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: 09e67b178ff8b6235458ea058ac7013a4eb0abb3b87f541713143b1200ba53ef; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:18:38.818Z.