CEN19FA270 · Pitts S2 B
Drug Fighter Pitts S2 B · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lakefront Airport (NEW) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA270
- 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
- 2 · 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
Pitts S2 B
- Aircraft type
- Pitts S2
- 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
- N600DF
- Operator
- Drug Fighter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LATo Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1983)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger, a TV news anchor, was filming a documentary on the pilot, which included a local flight in the pilot's aerobatic airplane. The airplane departed and turned onto the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern. The pilot requested to return to the airport but did not specify the reason for the return. A witness described the airplane as, “unstable” and “wiggling,” and said that the engine was sputtering before the airplane impacted the ground and burst into flames.
The airplane impacted terrain in an approximate 45° nose-down pitch attitude and was consumed by a post-impact fire. Examination of the flight controls and engine did not reveal any obvious pre-impact anomalies, although severe fire damage precluded complete examination. The wooden propeller blades were severely fractured and splintered, consistent with powered rotation at the time of impact. The reason for the loss of control and impact with terrain could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA270
- Event ID
- 20190816X21722
- Case number
- CEN19FA270
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: 0e3845eac4d24d1cc30ed7d28b095974fe21e70cfce7d96ab2d8a481d17cb60a; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:03:39.475Z.