LAX00LA068 · Clark PITTS S1X
Clark PITTS S1X · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Upland-Cable Airport (CCB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA068
- 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
Clark PITTS S1X
- Aircraft type
- Clark PITTS S1X
- 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
- N900SH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Upland-Cable Airport (CCB)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 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Stall/spin, not corrected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Upland, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During an air show, while conducting aerobatic maneuvers, the airplane continued in a spin to ground impact. According to witnesses, the pilot was performing an aerobatic routine with two other airplanes, known as a "squirrel cage" maneuver. The airplanes would take turns entering the aerobatic box to perform a single choreographed maneuver. The routine card indicated that the pilot was to perform multiple snap rolls when the accident occurred. A video of the pilot's routine was examined with the assistance of members of the International Aerobatic Club. The video showed that the pilot made 3 1/2 snap rolls to the right, and then 2 1/2 spins to the left. It appeared there was no flight control problem and the pilot entered a flat spin. The elevator appeared to be loaded and the pilot never broke the stall prior to impact. The pilot had written a magazine article advocating a specific spin recovery method.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to recover from an intentional aerobatic maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA068
- Event ID
- 20001212X20384
- Case number
- LAX00LA068
- 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: ab79877f566b6558496d6531682840522152885ed9c861440df3198b763fd49d; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:31:26.166Z.