CEN21FA424 · Boeing A75
Boeing A75 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21FA424
- 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
Boeing A75
- Aircraft type
- Boeing A75
- 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
- N19BB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 81 years (built 1940)
- 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 · aerobatics
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off and proceeded to an area northeast of the airport where he began performing aerobatic maneuvers. Witnesses reported that the airplane began a loop maneuver and, at the top of the loop while inverted, the airplane entered a flat spin. They observed the airplane recover from the spin. The airplane then gained altitude and entered another loop. At the top of that loop, while inverted, the airplane entered another flat spin, but this time the pilot did not recover. The airplane descended to impact with rugged terrain. The witnesses reported that the engine could be heard running during the descent to the point of impact. A postaccident examination revealed no preaccident failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot had used the sedating antihistamine diphenhydramine, which has a potential to cause cognitive and psychomotor slowing and drowsiness. There was insufficient evidence to determine whether the pilot was experiencing impairing diphenhydramine effects at the time of the crash, and no specific evidence that pilot impairment contributed to the crash.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during an aerobatic maneuver, resulting in the airplane impacting terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21FA424
- Event ID
- 20210917103896
- Case number
- CEN21FA424
- 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: 7652d60032c33c17cdb4f7b87cb4385e130e6c0a52bac59005c81b7e7a9ebd22; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:34:18.568Z.