WPR17LA186 · Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK.58
Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK.58 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Point Mugu Naval Air Station (Naval Base Ventura Co) (NTD) to Point Mugu Naval Air Station (Naval Base Ventura Co) (NTD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA186
- 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
- Government
- 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
Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK.58
- Aircraft type
- Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK 58
- 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
- N338AX
- Operator
- Airborne Tactical Advantage
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Point Mugu Naval Air Station (Naval Base Ventura Co) (NTD), Oxnard, CATo Point Mugu Naval Air Station (Naval Base Ventura Co) (NTD), Oxnard, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1959)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The civilian airline transport pilot was conducting a cross-country flight with another airplane to participate in a military air defense training exercise. The accident pilot reported that, while flying about 14,000 ft mean sea level (msl), one of the military airplanes started flying alongside his airplane's right wing and then accelerated ahead of his airplane and crossed in front of its flightpath. The military pilot stated that he tried to get the accident pilot's attention so that he could make him aware of his position but that he was unsuccessful. The accident pilot reported that he attempted to follow the military airplane but that it then turned right and passed in front of his flightpath again. The accident pilot added that, as he turned right to follow the military airplane, he heard a "thump," which he attributed to jet wash. His airplane then immediately rolled left. He attempted to counter the left roll by applying right aileron, but the airplane then entered a nose-down attitude and began to spin. The pilot attempted to recover control without success, and he subsequently ejected from the airplane while it was passing through 4,000 ft msl. The airplane subsequently descended into the ocean.
The airplane could not be examined after the accident because the wreckage was not recovered from the ocean. The pilot reported seeing that the magnetic indicators displayed black, which suggests that aileron hydraulic power was being supplied to the ailerons at the time of the loss of control.
Given the evidence, it is likely that, after the accident airplane flew through the military airplane's jet wash, aileron movement was inhibited for reasons that could not be determined, which resulted in the pilot's loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of airplane control after flying through another airplane's jet wash during an air defense exercise.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA186
- Event ID
- 20170823X05408
- Case number
- WPR17LA186
- 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: 876d03511efbd027cac57def3e243c7163f789e18308f0bab71701a4e932cab0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:44:40.197Z.