SEA04LA024 · Shear Titan Tornado
Shear Titan Tornado · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Salem, OR to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA024
- 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
Shear Titan Tornado
- Aircraft type
- Shear TITAN TORNADO
- 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
- N183T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem, ORTo 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
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Pilot in command › Physical impairment(hypoglycemia/diet)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Three witnesses said they observed the aircraft flying overhead and hearing a problem with the engine, as if it were cutting in and out. Two additional witnesses reported hearing the engine open all the way and at full throttle before seeing it nose dive into a set of power lines, subsequently impacting the ground. A sixth witness said he observed the airplane flying low with the engine having a low pitch sound before flying overhead and pitching to the right into a dive. A seventh witness observed the aircraft flying between 500 and 600 feet above ground level before observing it rise to an extremely high [pitch] angle, rolling over on its back, and plunging to the ground after hitting power lines. The aircraft came to rest on its left side with its wings and fuselage twisted. There was no post crash fire. A post-accident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no anomalies which would have prevented normal operations. It was confirmed by a family member that at the time of the accident the uncertificated pilot took two types of insulin daily and was taking five prescription medications for various medical conditions. Medical records indicate the pilot had a history of coronary heart disease, having undergone quintuple heart bypass surgery in 1999. The pilot was also diabetic, having been insulin dependant since 1977. Post-accident toxicology testing revealed the presence of multiple medications, including two prescription antidepressants detected in the blood and liver, and one over-the-counter antihistamine medication detected in the blood and liver. As recently as 5 weeks prior to the accident, medical records indicate the pilot suffered from memory lapses and dangerously low blood sugar.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain aircraft control while maneuvering due to a hypoglycemic condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA024
- Event ID
- 20031205X02004
- Case number
- SEA04LA024
- 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: 48a75825d1ae7673f6e5729c15eade4ba7635e0a05162e9a5f187712ebd02418; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:45:19.818Z.