CEN19FA094 · Cessna T337 C
Cessna T337 C · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm en route
From Lancaster Airport (LNC) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA094
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna T337 C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N922EJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lancaster Airport (LNC), Lancaster, TXTo Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated private pilot and three passengers departed on a cross-country flight in a multi-engine airplane, even though the pilot did not hold multiengine rating. At the time of departure, the weather was reported to be clear. However, a line of thunderstorms and high winds were along the flight route. Radar data showed that the airplane initially flew eastward and that, after entering an area of convective weather, it turned westward, likely to avoid the area of weather. The airplane then flew northeast before resuming eastward flight and entering another area of weather. The airplane then entered a series of descending spiral turns until impact. About 10 hours after the accident, a witness noted wreckage near a roadway, and the airplane was located shortly thereafter.
No preimpact anomalies were found with the airframe or engines that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. All separations were consistent with overload.
Parts of the right wing were located between 1 and 3 nautical miles from the main wreckage, indicating that an in-flight breakup of the airplane had occurred. Radar data showed that the airplane was flying at a groundspeed of between 160 and 190 kts before it entered the spiral shaped flight track. According to the manufacturer, the airplane's maximum maneuvering speed was about 135 kts. Thus, the in-flight breakup occurred because the airplane was operating above its maximum maneuvering speed, which exceeded the design load factor of the airplane.
Various aviation weather products indicated that the airplane entered areas of significant convective weather twice. Once the airplane entered the clouds and precipitation associated with thunderstorms, the airplane was also in areas that were favorable for icing conditions. No evidence indicated that the pilot received a weather briefing on the day before or the day of the accident. If he had received a weather briefing, he could have been aware of the severe thunderstorms predicted for the flight route.
Toxicology testing showed the pilot had taken a beta blocker used in the treatment of hypertension and certain arrhythmias.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's improper decision to continue flight into convective weather conditions, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its maximum maneuvering speed and the subsequent in-flight breakup. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight weather planning and his inadequate inflight weather avoidance of that weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA094
- Event ID
- 20190309X14003
- Case number
- CEN19FA094
- 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: dd42533c2df023a835a52872b681f74faa21c0177fa2537f701607ccc14bb6a3; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:55:10.030Z.