WPR25LA089 · Lockheed C-130A
TBM Lockheed C-130A · Accident: inflight upset en route
From Blythe Airport (KBLH) to Blythe Airport (KBLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA089
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Lockheed C-130A
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed C-130
- 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
- N466TM
- Operator
- TBM
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blythe Airport (KBLH), Blythe, CATo Blythe Airport (KBLH), Blythe, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1957)
- 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
- 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
- Inflight upset
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The operator reported that while conducting a high-altitude airdrop test, the 25,000lb airdrop package prematurely released while the airplane was maneuvering. The airdrop package extraction parachute did not deploy, and the package exited the rear of the airplane slowly, resulting in an excessive pitch-up and right yaw of the airplane. After the airdrop package exited the cargo door, the airplane pitched down violently, resulting in serious injuries to two crew members located in the cargo compartment. The aircraft returned to the airport without further incident. A post accident inspection revealed no aircraft damage and that the cargo locks were set improperly during loading. The operator reported that the airplane had no pre accident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
An inflight upset due to an improperly secured load that resulted in serious injuries.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA089
- Event ID
- 20250211199680
- Case number
- WPR25LA089
- 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, damage. 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: 9cb08d5596288ed3e289028f965b97ffaf318e8eca289088990cb5330397f239; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:39:13.716Z.