LAX97LA016 · Waco QCF
Waco QCF · Accident during initial climb
From L35 to L66 · Corona, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA016
- 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
Waco QCF
- Aircraft type
- Waco QCF
- 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
- N11481
- Operator
- Barry F. Branin · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L35To L66 · Corona, CA
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, not attained
- Pilot in command › Throttle/power control, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he initiated a takeoff roll in his 1931, open cockpit, wood and fabric airplane. The airplane had accelerated and climbed to about 20 feet above the runway, when the pilot smelled smoke in the cockpit. He abruptly retarded the engine power to terminate the flight. The airplane developed a high sink rate and touched down hard, and the right main landing gear collapsed. The pilot further reported that he subsequently determined that the aroma of 'smoke in the cockpit' was produced by persons burning debris near the airport.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper response to a perceived in-flight emergency by abruptly retarding the throttle and failing to properly flare the airplane during the aborted takeoff. The pilot's improper perception of the source of smoke was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA016
- Event ID
- 20001208X06926
- Case number
- LAX97LA016
- 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: 36255092d001ab5e9b99a56dd83ec5b1399d8a846f96b770c05fbf525131028e; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:57:50.032Z.