WPR20LA303 · Navion B
Navion B · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Santa Ynez Airport (IZA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA303
- 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
Navion B
- Aircraft type
- Navion B
- 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
- N37C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Santa Ynez Airport (IZA), Santa Ynez, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 70 years (built 1950)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Air Traffic control reported that, at the time of the accident, the traffic volume at the airport was moderate, but not complex. The pilot contacted the tower and reported that he was ready for takeoff. The controller replied that he was cleared for takeoff from 16R without delay. The airplane took off uneventfully; shortly thereafter the controller started to instruct the pilot to turn on a right crosswind but stopped and asked the pilot if he was ok. There was no response from the pilot. Witnesses reported that the airplane took off to the south and was flying lower than normal. In addition, the airplane started a right turn much earlier than most airplanes. As the airplane started its turn, they heard a “pop,” and the airplane made a “hard right” turn. The airplane then descended nose down with the wings at a slight angle as it went out of sight. Shortly thereafter, a plume of smoke was observed.
The airplane impacted nose low in a narrow parking lot about ½ mile west of the runway surface. The airplane wreckage was contained to a small area in between two rows of vehicles. A post-crash fire ensued, and a large portion of the fuselage and aft fuselage were consumed by fire. Postaccident examination of the engine and remaining airframe did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Given the abrupt climbing right turn it is likely the airplane stalled at a low altitude. It could not be determined if the moderate traffic at VNY was enough to cause the pilot to rush the turn to crosswind.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during an abrupt turn after takeoff at a low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA303
- Event ID
- 20200911X00935
- Case number
- WPR20LA303
- 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: c5be79a7684d74e5b87cd9426b98653f46fe9ee63896446b7fba21dfbb5684f0; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:19:36.663Z.