LAX02LA051 · Vernon Sonerai IIL
Vernon Sonerai IIL · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to Camarillo International Airport (CMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA051
- 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
Vernon Sonerai IIL
- Aircraft type
- Vernon SONERAI IIL
- 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
- N6399D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CA
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, 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
On the landing rollout the airplane departed the runway and came to rest inverted in an adjacent field. The adjacent field had recently been plowed, and contained furrows. The airplane traveled perpendicular to the furrows and nosed over. The purpose of the flight was to practice maneuvers, and fulfill the experimental operating certificate limitations intial 40-hour requirement. The pilot had accrued 5 hours of flight time on the airplane. When he returned to land, he noted a crosswind, but did not believe that it would have an affect on the landing. There were no mechanical anomalies noted with the airplane by the pilot. Of note in the pilot's written statement was the directional instability that he encountered during takeoffs in the 7 hours that were placed on the airplane within the previous year. He made several modifications, mostly rigging changes to the tailwheel, to improve the takeoff characteristics. While in contact with the Sonerai technical representative, the owner stated that there were plans to convert the conventional landing gear airplane to a tricycle landing gear. The proposed modification would solve the instability problem.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to maintain directional control on the landing rollout. Factors were the owner/pilot's inadequate remedial design changes and the freshly plowed field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA051
- Event ID
- 20011227X02450
- Case number
- LAX02LA051
- 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: d1819425acb9dfd94cd4ff57953417301261598033576ae32d4d04bf1c5cecaf; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:14:46.455Z.