WPR13LA385 · Robert Golding TBIRDII
Business & Pleasure Air Charter Robert Golding TBIRDII · Accident before flight
From Bakersfield, CA (no airport) to Bakersfield, CA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA385
- 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
Robert Golding TBIRDII
- Aircraft type
- Robert Golding TBIRDII
- 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
- N31683
- Operator
- Business & Pleasure Air Charter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bakersfield, CA (no airport)To Bakersfield, CA (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2001)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- 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
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot, who was interested in purchasing the airplane, met the seller at a dirt airstrip adjacent to the seller's property. For the flight, the seller, who only held a student pilot certificate, was in the left seat, and the buyer, who held a private pilot certificate, was in the right seat. The seller conducted the takeoff and the initial portion of the flight, which were both uneventful. He then turned control of the airplane over to the buyer. After some airwork to get the feel of the airplane, the buyer flew a low southbound pass along the airstrip. The airplane then struck power lines just beyond and perpendicular to the south end of the airstrip and then impacted in a cornfield. The airplane was substantially damaged by the impact and postimpact fire. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that the impact, fire, and recovery damage precluded the determination of any relevant preaccident airplane condition or operability information.
The seller stated that he had warned the buyer about the power lines, but the buyer stated that the only power lines that the seller warned him about ran parallel to the airstrip. The buyer reported that, near the end of the low pass, the engine failed to respond to his command for more power and that he then relinquished airplane control to the seller because he was not familiar with the airplane. Although the seller reported the loss of engine power, he did not report taking or being given control of the airplane near the end of the flight. He further reported that the buyer told him that he (the buyer) had mistakenly reduced power on the engine because of confusion.
Based on the lack of information provided by the pilots regarding the preflight briefing, the buyer's unfamiliarity with the surroundings and the airplane's throttle operation, and postflight statements from the seller, it is likely that the flight was not well planned or briefed, particularly regarding the participants' roles and responsibilities and the presence of potential flight hazards. The limited pre- and inflight coordination between the two pilots resulted in the buyer being unaware of the power lines at the south end of the airstrip and his uncertainty regarding throttle operation, which resulted in the airplane striking those power lines.
Probable cause
The failure of the two pilots to adequately planflight, particularly regarding their roles and responsibilities, which resulted in their failure to maintain sufficient altitude to clear power lines during a low pass.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA385
- Event ID
- 20130824X73533
- Case number
- WPR13LA385
- 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: d10454c394b6bd4da90345ee3c5d21a981137c858f5265e72a4b93dc9f66276c; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:36:32.437Z.