LAX08LA191 · Cessna 172S
San Diego Flight Training International Cessna 172S · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Long Beach International Airport (LGB) to Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA191
- 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
- 2 · 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 172S
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N2436F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CATo Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, 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
- Maneuvering · aerobatics
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aerodynamic 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses flying in a second airplane reported that the two airplanes left their home airport earlier in the day. They flew to another local area airport for a snack where they discussed the return flight (the accident flight). The accident pilot told his peers that he was going to do a spin on the way back to their home airport. He said that he had done spins before with a flight instructor and a passenger in the back. The two airplanes departed the local airport and were en route back to the home airport when the accident airplane radioed the other airplane indicating that he was setting up for the stall/spin maneuver. The pilots in the other airplane watched as the accident airplane began a climb from 5,500 feet to 7,500 feet and commenced with the stall/spin. After one full turn, the airplane returned to normal flight. The accident pilot radioed the other pilots and told them he was going to do another stall/spin, and was going to let it spin a "little more before he start[ed] the recovery." The witnesses observed the accident airplane set up for another spin, enter the spin, and watched as the airplane continued to spin until it crashed into the ocean. According to Cessna, intentional spins are prohibited when the rear seat(s) are occupied. Three people were on board the accident airplane. The airplane and two of its occupants were not located despite efforts by the United States Coast Guard and a private diving company.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to regain airplane control during an intentional stall/spin maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA191
- Event ID
- 20080625X00917
- Case number
- LAX08LA191
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-06-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2896a75d489e9a7ba881596a34af25e452c864be008cfbdf38ce184ffe3d609a; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:09:30.930Z.