CEN23FA167 · Titan TORNADO II
Titan TORNADO II · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Haynesville, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA167
- 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
Titan TORNADO II
- Aircraft type
- Titan TORNADO
- 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
- N31311
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Haynesville, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before the flight, the non-certificated pilot stated to the private airstrip owner that he was going to demonstrate the airplane’s climb performance during the takeoff and departure. The airstrip owner reported that the pilot performed a steep climbing takeoff and then initiated a left turn over wooded terrain. A witness, located near the departure end of the airstrip, reported that she thought the airplane was going to impact a tree in her yard due to its low altitude. The airplane then banked to the left before impacting the tree canopy southeast of her residence. The airplane entered the trees in a left-wing-down position before coming to rest inverted in a marsh. Both the private airstrip owner and the witness stated that the surface wind was gusting at the time of the accident. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The ethanol detected in the pilot’s cavity blood was likely from sources other than alcohol consumption, and it is unlikely that ethanol effects contributed to the accident. Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the non-certificated pilot failed to maintain airspeed during a steep initial climb and low-altitude turn, which led to an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, aerodynamic stall, and loss of control at an altitude too low to recover.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed and his exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of control at an altitude too low to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA167
- Event ID
- 20230501107170
- Case number
- CEN23FA167
- 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: 4af8d16456f0a29701ff54a4316c5aff68ceb6ef09a9840dd63d1b4cc1461296; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:59:18.746Z.