NYC04LA021 · Fleet 16B
Fleet 16B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Westerly State Airport (WST) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA021
- 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
Fleet 16B
- Aircraft type
- Fleet 16
- 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
- N80656
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westerly State Airport (WST), Westerly, RITo 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 › Clearance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was part of a flight of three airplanes. Two airplanes were flying in formation, while a photographer in a third airplane took photographs. Witnesses observed the accident airplane performing steep turns, steep ascents and "swooping down really low to the water." The accident airplane appeared to be pulling up, when it impacted the water at an angle of about 45 degrees. No major portions of the airframe were recovered. The airplane was equipped with a Kinner R-56 radial engine; which was recovered about 1 year after the accident. The engine was significantly corroded. All cylinders were present and did not display any obvious visual evidence of a catastrophic failure. The wooden propeller remained attached to the engine and both ends were splintered. At the time of the accident, the pilot had accumulated about 1,331 hours of total flight experience, which included about 160 hours in the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance while maneuvering, which resulted in a collision with water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA021
- Event ID
- 20031113X01893
- Case number
- NYC04LA021
- 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: d69ee689d8d35abaffbb9a5355a0cf12049e2ef7645f9ad30785072fe88d8ce1; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:49:26.818Z.