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Atlas / NTSB / LAX85FA068

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event LAX85FA068

1984-12-12 TULARE, California, United States Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N3WB

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

LANCAIR LANCAIR EVOLUTION

Year of manufacture

2013

Engine

P&W CANADA PT6A-135A (750 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20130711

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A31C96

Registrant of record

FUSION AIR AVIATION LLC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

ACFT DEPARTED ARPT & ABOUT 5 MINS LATER WAS SEEN 'DESCENDING VERTICALLY' OUT OF 'DARK RAIN CLOUD' AT ABOUT 1,000 FT AGL. DURING ATTEMPTED RECOVERY AT ABOUT 300 FT AGL, ACFT BROKE UP & CRASHED IN A FIELD. PLT DID NOT OBTAIN WX BRIEFING PRIOR TO FLT AND DID NOT HOLD AN INSTRUEMENT RATING. WX AT TIME OF DEPARTURE WAS 1,000 FT OVERCAST, VISIBILITY 2 IN FOG AND RAIN, WINDS CALM. WITNESSES REPORTED BASES OF CLOUDS WERE MOVING SE 'RAPIDLY' AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. WINDS ALOFT AT 3,000 FT WERE REPORTED AT 22 KTS. CUMULUS CLOUDS WERE REPORTED IN VICINITY OF ACCIDENT SITE ALONG WITH MODERATE OR GREATER TURBULENCE. EXAMINATION OF ACFT REVEALED NO PRE-EXISTING PROBLEMS. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1984_LAX85FA068.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (turbulence). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗