WPR22FA160 · Cessna 337
Cessna 337 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22FA160
- 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
Cessna 337
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N143JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1965)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 › Physical
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the pilot reported to the tower controller that he was not able to retract the airplane’s landing gear and requested to circle the airport at 2,500 ft. The airplane climbed to and remained at about 2,000 ft for about 2 minutes before entering a descent that continued until ground contact. Witnesses saw the airplane descending in a steep, nose-down attitude, and a surveillance video showed the airplane rotating in a nose-down attitude as it collided with terrain. Examination of the airframe and engines revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Toxicology testing of the pilot revealed 65 (mg/dL, mg/hg) ethanol in blood, 133 (mg/dL, mg/hg) ethanol in urine, and 10 (mg/dL, mg/hg) glucose in vitreous fluid. The ethanol production was not attributed to putrefaction. Based on the levels found and their distribution, it is likely that the pilot’s blood ethanol concentrations were around 0.12 gm/dL. It is likely that, while trying to troubleshoot the landing gear issue, the pilot allowed the airplane to slow and exceed its critical angle of attack. The airplane subsequently entered a spin from which the pilot was not able to recover. Given the levels of ethanol found in toxicology testing, the pilot would have likely experienced degradation of judgment, reasoning, and coordination that would have affected his ability to safely manage the airplane, and it is likely that his impairment due to alcohol consumption contributed to his loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of airplane control while troubleshooting a landing gear issue, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin at an altitude too low to recover. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s impairment from alcohol consumption.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22FA160
- Event ID
- 20220420104976
- Case number
- WPR22FA160
- 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, 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: b342efe0d1730e40a9ba2112683432acfd5be6fc53d268087840b3497efe4535; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:43:21.873Z.