D & S Aviation Flight 2216
American General Aircraft AG5B · Accident: vortex turbulence encountered on approach
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA035
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
American General Aircraft AG5B
- Aircraft type
- American General AG5
- 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
- N1195L
- Operator
- D&S Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY)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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 pattern downwind
- 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
- Vortex turbulence encountered
- 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
- Weather condition › Other
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The outboard 1/3 of the aircraft's left wing was deformed upward about 5 degrees with respect to the inboard section during an encounter with wake turbulence while on downwind leg for landing. The upper wing skins of both wings exhibited compression buckling, and the mass balance weights on both ailerons were separated and fell from the aircraft. The pilot reported that the flight was unremarkable until, while downwind for landing, there was an instantaneous jolt of sudden severe turbulence that ended before he could take any action. Data obtained from the airport noise abatement office showed that 2 minutes 23 seconds prior to the encounter, a heavy transport aircraft passed over the location on an ILS approach to another airport 6 miles away; the transport airplane was about 500 feet higher than the accident airplane as it crossed the location. The air traffic control tower at the airport where the accident occurred made a wake turbulence cautionary broadcast to all aircraft 30 seconds prior to when the accident aircraft first contacted the tower for landing. The cautionary broadcast was not repeated.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with unknown and unanticipated wake turbulence from a heavy transport aircraft, which was landing at another airport. A factor in the accident was the tower controller's failure to repeat a previously broadcast wake turbulence cautionary advisory when the aircraft later checked in on tower frequency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA035
- Event ID
- 20001212X20121
- Case number
- LAX00LA035
- 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 1999-11-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 50f99a9d2cfd7ab7a26dbd4314f2dff7d81ad1a658356cdece6ec58bbb6abe44; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:51:18.971Z.