CHI01LA294 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA294
- 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
- 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
Piper PA-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N4329Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, not successful
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the terrain while attempting an aerobatic maneuver. A witness to the accident stated he saw the accident airplane "do 3 or 4 turns going down after a stall." The witness reported the airplane descended below a tree line, impacting the ground. Another witness reported the accident airplane was performing "spins" and "barrel rolls" prior to the accident. Local law enforcement reported there was several beer cans around and in the airplane wreckage. No anomalies were found with the airplane that could be associated to any pre-impact condition. Toxicology test results indicate that 55 mg/dL of ethanol was detected in the pilot's blood, equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.055%. Additionally, sertaline (trade name Zoloft) and its metabolite (desmethylsertraline) were found in blood, liver, and urine. 1.672 ug/mL of sertaline and 2.983 ug/mL of desmethylsertaline were detected in the pilot's blood. Sertraline is a prescription antidepressant, also used in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic disorder. The pilot did not report the use of any medication at his last FAA medical examination, completed on June 13, 2000. Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) 91.17 "Alcohol or drugs" states no person may act, or attempt to act, as a crewmember of a civil aircraft within 8 hours after the consumption of any alcoholic beverage, while under the influence of alcohol, while using any drug that affects the person's faculties in any way contrary to safety, or while having 0.04 percent by weight or more alcohol in the blood.
Probable cause
The pilot's unsuccessful recovery from an intentional aerobatic stall/spin maneuver. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's impairment (alcohol), and his psychological condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA294
- Event ID
- 20010830X01832
- Case number
- CHI01LA294
- 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: 3c85030a685f9afcd3593c1e10d8064fb73083d1fde1dadb09b43b18f59e91f0; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:24:11.857Z.