LAX96LA258 · Davis CHALLENGER I CW CHALLENGER
Davis CHALLENGER I CW CHALLENGER · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Paso Robles Municipal Airport (PRB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA258
- 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
Davis CHALLENGER I CW CHALLENGER
- Aircraft type
- Davis CHALLENGER I CW
- 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
- N75489
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paso Robles Municipal Airport (PRB)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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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 handling, improper
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred during the pilot's maiden flight of the homebuilt following completion of construction the preceding week. According to a witness, the pilot took off and climbed 100 feet above the runway surface. During the climb, an airframe component separated from the wing and contacted the wood pusher propeller. A blade separated and all engine power was lost. The airplane then porpoised several times, turned 90 degrees from its runway heading, and collided with the ground in a 45-degree nose-down pitch attitude. A bent plastic (Lexan) strip was found about 300 feet downwind of the main wreckage and in close proximity to the separated propeller blade. The strip had been attached to the center section of the wing, forward of the engine, with Velcro self-adhesive tape. The adhesive remained attached to the wing, but it failed to adhere to the Lexan. In November, 1994, the FAA denied the pilot's last application for an aviation medical certificate because of his cardiovascular condition. Toxicology tests on the pilot revealed the presence of tranquilizers chlordiazepoxide (Librium) and diazepam (Valium), and the antidepressant amitriptyline (Elavil). Use of these drugs could adversely influence the pilot's mental processes, reaction time, and ability to control the airplane.
Probable cause
the owner/builder/pilot's impairment of judgment and performance due to drugs which led to his improper handling of the airplane and failure to maintain an adequate airspeed margin above stall speed, resulting in an inadvertent stall/spin. A factor which contributed to the accident was the owner/builder/pilot's use of an inadequate adhesive material in the construction of the airplane which resulted in a portion of the wing root surface skin to debond, separate, and impact a propeller blade, which also separated.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA258
- Event ID
- 20001208X06274
- Case number
- LAX96LA258
- 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: 11826db5c5a46c517ab64782a880836998f316e075de407646ceeb97a5662612; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:17:42.503Z.