LAX04LA034 · Canadair T33
Canadair T33 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA034
- 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
Canadair T33
- Aircraft type
- Canadair T33
- 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
- N99192
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/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 during low altitude maneuvers. Witnesses heard the loud engine noise, which got their attention. The airplane was very low, just several hundred feet above the ground. The airplane turned and the left wing went straight up and down, and then the airplane turned upright. It went into a second left turn, but this time it went straight down. It seemed to spin, and the engine was loud the whole time. Witnesses said that the airplane looked symmetrical; they could see both wings and tip tanks. Some witnesses thought that the engine sounded erratic for a short while, but then noted that it was loud until impact. An experienced pilot in the T33 trained the accident pilot, and said that the pilot was very conscientious. The pilot would not always wear his G-suit, when they routinely practiced aerobatics. They would land at a nearby airport, refuel, and then return to Van Nuys. Another pilot reported that the pilot did not unpin all six ejection pins. He would pull the canopy pins, but not the seat pins. There was a pin on the floor on each side of the seat, and he normally left both seat pins in. The pilot had called his wife to tell her that he was going flying near the high desert practice area. He was going to do aerobatics, fly around, and come back. The airplane was highly fragmented, and investigators could not establish control continuity. The engine sustained mechanical damage, and displayed evidence of rotation under power at impact.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance from terrain during low altitude maneuvers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA034
- Event ID
- 20031112X01888
- Case number
- LAX04LA034
- 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: 9080583b2a5b398b8f608d8e9b53d5c93d4f984b1f625785cb01fe2fad43e054; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:49:15.025Z.