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Atlas / NTSB / LAX90FA336

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event LAX90FA336

1990-09-29 LAKEPORT, California, United States Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN AIRSPEED DURING A PULL-UP FROM A LOW PASS. FACTORS WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE PILOT'S POOR JUDGEMENT IN BUZZING THE SEAPLANES WHICH RESULTED IN INSUFFICIENT ALTITUDE TO RECOVER FROM THE STALL, AND THE PILOT'S INEXPERIENCE IN THE AIRPLANE.

Factual narrative

THE AIRPLANE WAS OBSERVED MAKING SEVERAL LOW PASSES, WITH ITS SMOKE GENERATORS OPERATING, OVER SEAPLANES ANCHORED IN A LAKE. THE LAST PASS WAS REPORTEDLY AT AN ALTITUDE LESS THAN 50 FT, AND THEN THE AIRPLANE WAS OBSERVED ENTERING AN ABNORMALLY STEEP CLIMB, FOLLOWED BY A NEAR VERTICAL NOSE-DOWN ATTITUDE TO IMPACT. A VIDEO TAPE SHOWS THAT BOTH PROPELLERS WERE TURNING. THE PILOT HAD RECEIVED HIS MULTI-ENGINE RATING IN A BEECH 76 ON 3/6/90, AND HIS TYPE RATING IN THE AIRPLANE 3/28/90. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_LAX90FA336.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 (stall). 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 ↗