WPR22FA195 · Meyer Fred J HORNET
Meyer Fred J HORNET · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Big Bear City Airport (L35) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22FA195
- 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
Meyer Fred J HORNET
- Aircraft type
- Meyer Fred HORNET
- 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
- N6366M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear Lake, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1998)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
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 pilot was performing aerobatic maneuvers over desert terrain. A witness reported that the airplane entered a “barrel roll climb,” followed by a “stall.” The airplane then entered an inverted, nose-down “dive” before rolling upright, but continuing its nose-down descent. The witness then lost sight of the airplane behind trees. The airplane impacted terrain in a nose-down attitude and was significantly fragmented. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any preimpact mechanical anomalies. Flight tracking data ended about 1 mile from the accident site at an altitude about 2,725 ft above ground level (agl). Given the available information, it could not be determined whether the pilot lost control of the airplane and was unable to recover before impacting terrain, or entered an intentional aerobatic maneuver with insufficient altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain altitude during an aerobatic maneuver, which resulted in an impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22FA195
- Event ID
- 20220602105178
- Case number
- WPR22FA195
- 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: 160d3c1ff002f96835d4926a94cff64401770d5d104bbed6c8b2b21934e51daf; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:45:21.104Z.