WPR13FA076 · McKenzie LANCAIR IV-P TURBINE
McKenzie LANCAIR IV-P TURBINE · Accident en route
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13FA076
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
McKenzie LANCAIR IV-P TURBINE
- Aircraft type
- Mckenzie LANCAIR IV-P TURBINE
- 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
- N5M
- Operator
- Stern William A JR · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), Montgomery Fiel, CATo Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Phoenix, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2003)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated private pilot departed on a cross-country flight in the amateur-built, experimental, turbine-powered airplane. The weather observations indicated two layers of clouds with multiple base layers from 3,600 feet above ground level (agl) and a broken ceiling about 6,000 feet agl. After departure, the pilot told an air traffic controller that he was looking for a hole to get above the clouds. The airplane was likely flying between the two cloud layers as the pilot attempted to find a hole in order to climb above the upper cloud layer. Six minutes after departure, witnesses on the ground observed the airplane descending in a "flat spin." The recorded data from the airplane's onboard electronic flight information system showed that the pilot had climbed to about 6,858-feet pressure altitude (about 5,800 feet agl) while letting the airplane's airspeed decay from about 220 knots to about 76 knots, at which time the airplane entered a spin. The data showed that the airplane completed about seven 360-degree rotations in the spin before it impacted the ground. Further, the data indicated that the airplane's engine was operating normally, and after the first 360-degree rotation, the propeller rpm dropped from about 1,800 to 1,000, consistent with the pilot feathering the propeller. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed damage consistent with the airplane impacting terrain in a flat spin, and the propeller blades were found in the feathered position. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical discrepancies were found with the airplane's airframe, engine, or propeller that would have prevented normal operation.
The medications metoprolol and tamsulosin were detected at unquantified levels in the pilot's muscle and liver. Neither of these medications was likely to have resulted in impairment. The pilot had reported use of tamsulosin to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in May 2011. The use of metoprolol was not reported to the FAA, and it is unknown when the pilot began taking this medication or for what reason he was taking it.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed while attempting a visual climb through a broken cloud layer, which resulted in a stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13FA076
- Event ID
- 20121229X60421
- Case number
- WPR13FA076
- 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: investigation status. 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: 9985a42ff599e448b2ec7b1917aa71cd61ffda595bee8b7c9dfd65c4c03b64b3; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:51:12.120Z.