WPR14LA322 · Schweizer Aircraft Corp G 164B
Macys Flying Service Schweizer Aircraft Corp G 164B · Accident: loss of visual reference while maneuvering
From Tulelake Municipal Airport (O81) to Tulelake Municipal Airport (O81)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA322
- 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
Schweizer Aircraft Corp G 164B
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N3627R
- Operator
- Macys Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulelake Municipal Airport (O81), Tulelake, CATo Tulelake Municipal Airport (O81), Tulelake, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1983)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was applying the last load of insecticide to a field in the agricultural biplane when the top wing struck power lines as the biplane passed underneath it. The operator reported that the pilot had applied insecticide to the same field many times. Further, he had flown under the power lines many times without incident. There were no witnesses to the accident; a spotter who had been assigned to the pilot was transitioning to another location at the time.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the propeller's damage signatures indicated that the engine was operating at the time of impact. At the time of the accident, the sun would have been positioned just off the airplane's right wing; therefore, it is unlikely that the sun hindered the pilot's view. The airplane struck thinner lines that were about 10 ft below 40-ft-high thicker lines; therefore, it is possible that the pilot was focused on the upper lines and did not see the lower ones.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from power lines while maneuvering during low-altitude operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA322
- Event ID
- 20140801X33652
- Case number
- WPR14LA322
- 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: 5e1d1e2e264706a49bd31f243915b60e03415a304553efbd8649f5b50de9424a; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:22:55.940Z.