LAX00FA170 · Emigh Aircraft TROJAN A2
Emigh Aircraft TROJAN A2 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From MERWINS RANCH, CA (no airport) to KNIGHTSEN FIELD, CA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA170
- 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
Emigh Aircraft TROJAN A2
- Aircraft type
- Emigh TROJAN A2
- 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
- N8324H
- Operator
- Kenneth L. Burgess · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MERWINS RANCH, CA (no airport)To KNIGHTSEN FIELD, CA (no airport)
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Unknown › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/pilot of a vintage unregistered airplane, along with two other airplanes, had flown from one private airstrip to another for lunch. The airplane/owner pilot did not possess a medical certificate. They departed after lunch and the accident plane owner/pilot radioed one of the other pilots and stated he was 'going to check the stock.' The airplanes went their separate ways. Witnesses reported that the accident airplane was flying low, about 100 feet above ground level. Two of the witnesses stated that the plane suddenly spiraled downward counterclockwise; one stated that the plane was turning when the nose started to move up and then it just fell out of the sky. The private rated passenger pilot possessed a medical certificate and was rated for single engine land airplanes and reported about 85 flight hours. The toxicological report for the passenger rated pilot was positive for over-the-counter medications with impairment potential.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA170
- Event ID
- 20001212X20839
- Case number
- LAX00FA170
- 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: 1b8d63b41ba513250719af509e5e3d7ac0c70b3e24736035b8d6a615408db435; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:18:18.207Z.