LAX05LA216 · Cessna 337G
Cessna 337G · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV) to Van Nuys Airport (VNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA216
- 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
Cessna 337G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N3BZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV), Mohave, CATo Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Pole
- 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 › Climb, not possible
- Weather condition › Downdraft
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 impacted a light post, a hotel, and terrain shortly after takeoff. The pilot reported that the ground roll and liftoff seemed normal. He reported retracting the landing gear and flaps while at a 300-foot/minute climb at 90 miles/hour. He said the flight encountered a downdraft shortly after that during the takeoff initial climb at around 200 to 300 feet above ground level. When the flight encountered the reported downdraft, the engine instruments indicated that both the front and rear engines were producing 24 inches of manifold pressure and 2,500 rpm. The pilot said he was unable to arrest the descent prior to colliding with the hotel and light post. Post-accident examination of the aircraft and engines provided no evidence of a malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation of the engines. Review of the closest weather facility's recorded weather data (located 17 nautical miles away) revealed the flight had a likely headwind of 11 knots and a computed density altitude of 4,903 feet. The calculated performance data revealed that the airplane should have been able to climb about a rate of 850 feet/minute with both engines operative and at normal climb speed of 109 miles/hour.
Probable cause
the pilot's encounter with a downdraft or wind shear during takeoff the initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA216
- Event ID
- 20050705X00934
- Case number
- LAX05LA216
- 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: 3d5e959c06fdd51dbf729eb97a7233bea02f65daf417c212d033870f2577bcce; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:06:02.592Z.