MIA05CA144 · Grumman American G-164
Ponce Crop Dusting Services Grumman American G-164 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Lajas, PR to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05CA144
- 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
Grumman American G-164
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American G-164
- 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
- N460Y
- Operator
- Ponce Crop Dusting Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lajas, PRTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · aerial application
- 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
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, 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 pilot stated that he departed from the Lajas Agriculture Airport at about 7 am in his Grumman G-164 with a northeast heading. On board the airplane was a load of mircoflex fertilizer, which was to be sprayed on a private farm in Sabana Grande. His first swift run over the farm was successful but as he begun his first procedure turn, he experienced a strong downdraft on the leeward side of the mountain. Unable to recover from the downdraft, the airplane lost altitude and crashed into a backyard of a private home. Neither he nor anyone on the ground was hurt and the private home sustained little damage. He further added the weather was for a visual flight rules operation; with the winds from the north and the temperature was 30 degrees Celsius. The pilot stated there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions to the airplane or any of its systems prior to the accident.The FAA inspector who responded to the accident stated the airplane impacted the ground straight down in a flat attitude and with no forward direction.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent encounter with a downdraft in mountainous terrain resulting in an uncontrolled descent and collision with the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05CA144
- Event ID
- 20050907X01395
- Case number
- MIA05CA144
- 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: 10f9f012469a8055aafb0bb45c74569118e142eb1b68f0def98f30f185eae451; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:56:21.587Z.