LAX00LA049 · Corbin/King OSPREY 2
Corbin/King OSPREY 2 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA049
- 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
Corbin/King OSPREY 2
- Aircraft type
- Corbin/king OSPREY 2
- 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
- N192DC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane came to rest in a lake after witnesses heard a loud noise. They saw the airplane in a tight spiral and pieces of it were floating in trail. The engine sound changed from a loud to a softer tone as the airplane rotated. Earlier in the afternoon, the pilot had visited a retired FAA inspector in Ramona, California, where he had appeared to be in good health and spirits. The inspector looked at the airplane prior to departure and did not notice anything unusual. The engine sounded good and was running strong when it taxied away from his hangar. Both wings and the fuselage/tail assembly were found floating. The left wing and canopy were lightly damaged. The left wing fractured and separated near the fuselage in a downward direction. The rest of the airplane was highly damaged and fragmented. Investigators established flight control continuity. They established engine valve train and accessory gear continuity. The oil screen was clean and the spark plug color indicated normal operation. They discovered no discrepancies that would have precluded normal operation of the airframe or engine. Toxicological testing returned a positive result for amitriptyline and nortriptyline. Amitriptyline is one of the most sedating of the antidepressants, and is given almost exclusively in the evenings because of these effects. The levels found in the pilot's blood suggested regular use of a low dosage of the medication as he and his doctor had previously described in the application for his airman's medical certificate. It is unclear what effect, if any, such low levels would have on the pilot's performance. The nature of the accident does not suggest that the medication played a significant role. However, it is possible that the medication and/or the condition for which it was being taken resulted in less than optimum response to an evolving emergency condition.
Probable cause
The pilot exceeded the design stress limits of the airplane resulting in wing overload and separation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA049
- Event ID
- 20001212X20261
- Case number
- LAX00LA049
- 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 1999-12-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2c3343127098f71bbd27d16636befa36019181fadf3699b42786dac0821de3a6; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:36:21.888Z.