LAX06LA016 · Nord 3202
Nord 3202 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ) to Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA016
- 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
Nord 3202
- Aircraft type
- Nord 3202
- 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
- N22532
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ), Casa Grande, AZTo Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ), Casa Grande, AZ
- 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
- 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
- Unqualified person › Airspeed, not maintained
- Unqualified person › Stall, 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 stalled the airplane during the base leg of the traffic pattern and collided with the ground near the end of the runway approach lighting system for runway 05. The pilot had returned from a 2-year mission with his church and was reacquainting himself with flying. The pilot's medical certificate and student pilot certificate were expired. According to family members, the pilot spent the morning practicing touch-and-go takeoffs and landings with a family member (who held a commercial certificate and an expired medical certificate) and then performed five solo takeoffs and landings uneventfully. They further stated that other airplanes were flying to the airport practicing instrument approaches and it was difficult to understand where they were along the practice approaches due to their language accent. Family members stated that, while the accident airplane was on the base turn to final of the sixth approach, a multiengine airplane was on final and the pilot executed an evasive maneuver to avoid the multiengine airplane during which the accident airplane stalled and descended uncontrolled to the ground. The Federal Aviation Administration accident coordinator examined the wreckage following the accident and did not identify any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Although the airplane was equipped with a lap belt and shoulder harness restraint system, a family member noted that the pilot was not wearing the shoulder harness at the time of the accident because he was not performing aerobatics. Federal Aviation Regulation 14 CFR 91.107 requires the use of both seat belts and if installed, shoulder harnesses, during movement on the surface, takeoff, and landing. Review of autopsy results and impact damage to the wreckage indicated that the pilot's proper use of a shoulder harness combined with a lap belt would have significantly increased his probability of survival.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during a low-altitude evasive maneuver away from another airplane, which resulted in a stall and uncontrolled descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA016
- Event ID
- 20051028X01752
- Case number
- LAX06LA016
- 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: 11a8caa39a65eeb7e3d306102d6c6950002d98bfb6668e2f43b791297c141a06; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:47:51.562Z.