WPR17FA091 · Nanchang CJ6A
Nanchang CJ6A · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Apple Valley Airport (APV) to Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17FA091
- 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
Nanchang CJ6A
- Aircraft type
- Nanchang CJ6
- 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
- N192NG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Apple Valley Airport (APV), Apple Valley, CATo Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV), Porterville, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1975)
- 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 · descent
- 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 control in flight
- 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
The private pilot was part of a formation of four airplanes making a cross-country flight during day visual meteorological conditions over a broken-to-overcast cloud layer. During the flight, the accident airplane, which was positioned left of the lead airplane, began drifting to the left of and behind the formation, which resulted in the lead pilot losing sight of the airplane. The lead pilot twice asked the accident pilot if he was okay and received affirmative responses. However, the pilot in trail lost sight of the accident airplane as it dropped below and behind his airplane, and the pilot positioned to the right of the lead pilot observed the accident airplane descend in a wings level, slight nose-down attitude into clouds below and behind their position. Despite multiple attempts, no further radio communication was established with the accident pilot. A witness who was located near the accident site saw the airplane descend from the clouds in a near vertical attitude until she lost sight of it behind a nearby ridgeline.
Examination of the accident site indicated that the airplane impacted terrain in a near vertical attitude. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation.
Toxicology testing revealed ethanol in the pilot's muscle tissue; however, no ethanol was found in brain tissue making it likely the ethanol was produced postmortem. The pilot had a history of coronary artery disease and was at an increased risk for a sudden cardiovascular event; however, there is insufficient evidence to determine if his heart disease contributed to this accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control following a descent into clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17FA091
- Event ID
- 20170427X94347
- Case number
- WPR17FA091
- 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: ae2ae10648d23adcca6a6368e8a1b5ffd5bc1fdfccaca7013edaf9d090295eb2; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:01:44.585Z.