FTW04LA226 · Cassutt IIIM
Cassutt IIIM · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ) to LVJ
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA226
- 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
Cassutt IIIM
- Aircraft type
- Cassutt IIIM
- 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
- N3TW
- Operator
- Michael G Bernard · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ), Pearland, TXTo LVJ
- 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 base
- 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/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 246.6-hour pilot was conducting a series of touch-and-go landings in an amateur-built race airplane. While the airplane was turning from base leg to final within the airport traffic pattern, a witness observed the airplane "descending rapidly in a nose down" attitude through approximately 500 feet agl. The witness stated that the airplane "fell straight down in a spin" until it impacted terrain. Another witness located at the airport reported seeing the airplane turn left base at a bank angle of approximately 90 degrees. Examination of the engine and airframe were conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration and no anomalies were noted. Review of the pilot's logbooks revealed he had accumulated approximately 2 hours in the accident make/model airplane. The former owner of the accident airplane reported that the pilot had recently purchased the airplane approximately six months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed sufficient for flight resulting in an inadvertent stall/spin while turning from the base leg of the traffic pattern to final. A contributing factor was the pilot's lack of experience for the make/model airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA226
- Event ID
- 20040909X01382
- Case number
- FTW04LA226
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-09-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aadd4de62c436a9f567ce18542f29784748bc21cd065b0bc48cfb3adb6219a0a; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:21:20.332Z.