CHI96LA210 · Farland GENESIS
Farland GENESIS · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 12Y to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA210
- 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
- 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
Farland GENESIS
- Aircraft type
- Farland GENESIS
- 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
- N9274S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 12YTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported the student pilot did a thorough preflight inspection and that the engine sounded good during run-up. The airplane climbed to about 100 feet AGL after takeoff and made a 180 degree turn. It then veered to the right and gradually lost altitude to 60 feet. The airplane suddenly nosed over and impacted the ground. Examination of the airplane revealed that the flight controls and engine exhibited continuity. Damage indicated the airplane impacted the ground in a nose low attitude. A toxicology test of the pilot's blood showed 0.493 mcg/ml Chlorpheniramine, and 0.324 mcg/ml Diphenhydramine. Chlorpheniramine and Diphenhydramine are antihistamines, which can result in drowsiness; the quantities found were many times the therapeutic levels. Also, an unspecified level of Diazepam (generic name for Valium) was detected in the pilot's blood and liver fluid. None of these drugs were approved for use while operating an aircraft. The student pilot had only about three hours of flight time in the make and model of airplane, and he had not been endorsed by a flight instructor to fly the airplane. The pilot had a history of obstructive sleep apnea, which was under evaluation. A witness reported the pilot had complained of a splitting headache on the night before the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's impairment of judgment and performance due to drugs, and his failure to maintain control of the airplane, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and collision with terrain. Factors related to the accident were: the pilot's limited aeronautical experience and limited experience in the make and model of the accident airplane, which likely had different flying characteristics from the airplane in which he trained.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA210
- Event ID
- 20001208X05932
- Case number
- CHI96LA210
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 37452f2487b7d1c9b41e84a42911257e8ad2a373e0fc4668060c4d24117ac8dd; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:18:41.548Z.