NYC02LA034 · Gillette Baby Ace
Gillette Baby Ace · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Spencerport, NY (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA034
- 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
- 0 · 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
Gillette Baby Ace
- Aircraft type
- Gillette BABY ACE
- 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
- N916MG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spencerport, NY (no airport)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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane about 200 feet above the ground, turning from base to final leg. It was in a steep bank, approximately 60 degrees. The witnessed remarked to his wife that the airplane was going to stall, and then he observed the airplane fly directly into the ground. The pilot was seriously injured, and did not recall the accident. Examination of the wreckage by an FAA inspector revealed that the right wing aileron cable was not secured in a pulley groove. However, emergency personnel had severed the wings during the rescue effort, and the FAA inspector could not determine if the cable dislodged before the accident or during the rescue effort.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during approach to the airport, which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA034
- Event ID
- 20011211X02385
- Case number
- NYC02LA034
- 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: 5f00a3b17fd164796c2be42b5ff4c85f52c9c44f862a61b5f02ea2d3493e1534; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:43:18.627Z.