LAX96LA261 · Rominger EYAS
Rominger EYAS · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA261
- 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
Rominger EYAS
- Aircraft type
- Rominger EYAS
- 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
- N8012U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS)To 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, design change, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flare, not attained
- Pilot in command › Visual/aural detection
- Window, canopy › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff, the airplane's canopy came open about 20 feet above the ground and separated. The pilot's vision was impaired by air blasting in his face. He then 'closed' the throttle, and the airplane descended to a hard landing on the runway and was damaged. Investigation revealed that FAA personnel inspected the airplane before the accident in conjunction with an application for an experimental airworthiness certificate; the pilot/builder was denied an airworthiness certificate. After addressing some of the discrepancies and making some changes, the pilot/builder submitted an application for an experimental airworthiness certificate to an FAA designated airworthiness representative (DAR). The FAA DAR issued the certificate. After the accident, FAA airworthiness inspectors, who were familiar with the airplane, examined it. They noted the airplane had been modified in a manner defined as major changes in design. One of the modifications concerned the airplane's canopy. After the postaccident examination, the FAA determined 'the aircraft was not in a safe condition for operation at the time of the accident.'
Probable cause
an inadequate design change by the pilot/builder of the airplane's canopy; a malfunction of the canopy, which resulted in its separation; and failure of the pilot to flare the airplane during an emergency landing after takeoff, due to the wind blast that impaired his vision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA261
- Event ID
- 20001208X06055
- Case number
- LAX96LA261
- 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: 545bd5a8d95a82615a9b1b27631fa951001ac4cce61c1a5b6342f4bbd8e35894; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:03:26.354Z.