CEN14LA015 · North American P 51D
Lone Star Flight Museum North American P 51D · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS) to Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA015
- 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
North American P 51D
- Aircraft type
- North American P-51
- 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
- N4151D
- Operator
- Lone Star Flight Museum
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS), Galveston, TXTo Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS), Galveston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1944)
- 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
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Psychological
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 and passenger departed on the flight in a vintage warbird airplane. After departure, radar tracked the flight along a bay in a southwestern direction. A witness reported that he heard the airplane overhead heading south and that he then saw the airplane slowly turn north and appear to descend at a high rate of speed before it impacted the water. The airplane was largely fragmented upon impact.
The flight was recorded by an onboard video recording system. A review of the video revealed that, a few minutes into the flight, the pilot asked the passenger if he'd like to fly the airplane. The passenger replied he was not a pilot, but he'd like to try it. The video showed that, with the passenger at the controls, the airplane steeply banked right to about 90 degrees, and the nose dropped; the pilot explained that back pressure was needed on the stick during turns to prevent the loss of lift. The conversation continued as the airplane was rolling to wings level and as the pilot was encouraging the passenger to pull back on the stick. During this time, the video showed the airplane descending toward the water. Neither the pilot nor passenger acknowledged the impending collision. It is likely that the pilot's focused attention on instructing the passenger contributed to the his lack of recognition of the impending collision. It could not be determined if the water's smooth surface contributed to the pilot's loss of situational awareness. The accident is consistent with the pilot's loss of situational awareness resulting in controlled flight into the water.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of situational awareness while instructing the passenger, which resulted in the controlled flight of the airplane into the water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA015
- Event ID
- 20131024X85621
- Case number
- CEN14LA015
- 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, 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: 69c9928c93fe23ecb7b041998e573e13370afff5e44458ecd895053fc7c22566; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:06:03.051Z.