FTW01FA063 · Aero Vodochody L-39C
Aero Vodochody L-39C · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Lafayette Regional Airport (LFT) to Lafayette Regional Airport (LFT)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01FA063
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Aero Vodochody L-39C
- Aircraft type
- Aero Vodochody L-39
- 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
- N901NL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lafayette Regional Airport (LFT), Lafayette, LATo Lafayette Regional Airport (LFT), LA
- 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
- 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
- Altitude › Low
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The tandem seat experimental jet aircraft impacted terrain while performing low level aerobatics. Witnesses observed the airplane flying inverted over the pilot's hunting camp just prior to ground impact. No anomalies were found with the airframe or engine during examination of the wreckage. Partial disassembly of the engine revealed that it was operating at the time of the accident. According to radar records and a statement provided by an FAA inspector, the pilot had flown "vigorous" aerobatic flight sequences in a different airplane several hours prior to the accident flight. The two types of aircraft flown on the day of the accident had dissimilar flight envelopes, configurations, sight pictures, and relative speeds. An FAA inspector, who had given the pilot aerobatic instruction in the past, stated that the pilot could have been impaired during the accident flight due to "acute fatigue" from the aerobatic flights he flew earlier on the day of the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from terrain while performing low level aerobatics. A factor was fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01FA063
- Event ID
- 20010220X00467
- Case number
- FTW01FA063
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4c9a9e333c8d9f9e1128ab20b312f1709c3195d9fb026d460c7171701b33bfb3; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:40:02.141Z.