LAX01FA279 · Beech F-33A
Beech F-33A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA279
- 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
Beech F-33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft F-33
- 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
- N3172P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR), Goodyear, AZTo 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
- 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(cfi) › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Maneuver, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with terrain while on a low level navigation exercise and was almost totally consumed in a postcrash fire. The pilots were members of the German Air Force (GAF) and the flight was a low level navigation mission as part of an initial air force pilot training course. The flight syllabus called for the flight to complete the route at 500 feet agl. Another airplane with two GAF instructors aboard departed immediately after the accident airplane. The two instructors in the second airplane initially flew north of the standard route and then turned south to intercept it. They were about 1,500 agl. As they turned south, they observed the accident airplane proceeding on a southeasterly course. Both instructors said that they were looking down at the other airplane, and both estimated its altitude was 500 to 700 agl. Both instructors said the accident airplane was in straight and level flight on a southeasterly heading. As the airplane crossed the ridge, the airplane went from straight and level to a 30- to 40-degree angle of bank. The bank angle seemed to increase to 60 degrees and continued to 135 degrees as the nose went down. It appeared to the pilot in the left seat that the maneuver was abrupt, but he saw nothing to account for it. He didn't observe any obstacles to avoid, any smoke or flames coming from the airplane prior to impact, and he did not see anything falling from the airplane. The weather was clear and there was no turbulence. The airplane came to rest in an upright position. Vegetation ranging between 3 and 20 feet in height, and within 5 to 30 feet both behind and in front of the wreckage, was scorched but undamaged. Examination of the wreckage and ground scars disclosed that the airplane impacted the hillside in an attitude level with the slope and with a large vertical energy vector. Pieces of airframe and debris that came to rest outside of the charred areas were not sooty or discolored. Control continuity existed from the control surfaces to the thermally destroyed cabin area. There was no evidence of a catastrophic engine malfunction.
Probable cause
The flying pilot's initiation of an intentional maneuver at an altitude inadequate to maintain terrain clearance. Low altitude flight was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA279
- Event ID
- 20010828X01802
- Case number
- LAX01FA279
- 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: 65b20922073e345f86c138562e6cc36b849c2b84289bfe646a1b38f943546c85; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:24:34.146Z.