WPR19FA095 · North American T28 B
Tomorrows Aeronautical Museum North American T28 B and Long Beach Flying Club Cessna 152 · Accident: runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person) during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FA095
- 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
Aircraft 1 · North American T28 B
- Aircraft type
- North American T28
- 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
- N5440F
- Operator
- Tomorrows Aeronautical Museum
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CATo Compton Woodley Airport (CPM), Compton, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 63 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Aircraft 2 · Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N48962
- Operator
- Long Beach Flying CLub
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CATo Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 student pilot and flight instructor in the Cessna were landing at the non-tower-controlled airport when a North American T-28 collided with the Cessna from behind, fatally injuring the student. Radar data indicated that the T-28 overflew the airport before joining the downwind leg of the traffic pattern for the landing runway; about this time, the Cessna was on final approach. The pilot of the T-28 reported that the bright sun and the haze created a glare on the windscreen that obscured his forward vision, making it difficult for him to see directly ahead, and the glare became worse as he descended toward the runway on final approach. The T-28 pilot saw the Cessna ahead of him on the runway just before the collision occurred.
The instructor onboard the Cessna could not recall the details of the flight but reported that his student would have made radio calls on the airport's common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF) as they approached the airport for landing. The CTAF was not recorded, and the radio frequency settings of the Cessna could not be determined due to thermal damage. Examination of the T-28 revealed that its radio was not tuned to the airport's CTAF; therefore, the T-28 pilot was neither receiving position reports from other aircraft in the traffic pattern, nor was he broadcasting his position. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the T-28 pilot's failure to see and avoid the Cessna while landing with reduced visibility due to sun glare, and it is likely that his failure to monitor and use the CTAF contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the T-28 pilot to see and avoid the Cessna while landing with reduced visibility due to sun glare, which resulted in a collision on the runway. Contributing to the accident was his failure to use the airport's common traffic advisory frequency during the approach and landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FA095
- Event ID
- 20190313X23730
- Case number
- WPR19FA095
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-03-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d6583c471d283941944ebd77627557a4cf50746e065be5ad637afde81542f9df; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:10:15.643Z.