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WPR19FA159 · Titan TITAN II Undesignat

4 Jun 2019 · Summerville, OR, United States

Titan TITAN II Undesignat · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering

From La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD) to La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD)

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Event

NTSB case
WPR19FA159
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

Titan TITAN II Undesignat

Aircraft type
Titan II
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
N4362V
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD), La Grande, ORTo La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD), La Grande, OR
Aircraft age
About 9 years (built 2010)
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
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
Low altitude operation/event
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 non-certificated pilot was seen by witnesses flying at low altitude, which they described as near treetop and powerline level. One witness reported that the airplane entered a “straight up” climb about 300 ft, then dove to the ground and leveled the airplane about 50 ft above ground; the pilot did this three times before the accident occurred during the fourth maneuver. Another witness reported that, during the last maneuver, at the top of the climb, the airplane aerodynamically stalled, spun to the left, and impacted the ground.

Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Given the available evidence, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack, and the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall and spin.

Probable cause

The noncertificated pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and impact with terrain.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record WPR19FA159
Event ID
20190605X01617
Case number
WPR19FA159
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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-06-05.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 4985e7be341741854c5124909bc2a3f008f65768c1fa2a93c2abb180532bc236; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:59:27.015Z.