MIA97LA141 · Young MERLIN GT
Young MERLIN GT · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Pinellas County Mosquito Control Heliport (95FL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA141
- 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
Young MERLIN GT
- Aircraft type
- Young MERLIN GT
- 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
- N2100S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pinellas County Mosquito Control Heliport (95FL)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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the amphibious/homebuilt aircraft elected to take off from an intersection of a taxiway and runway from which there was 1,600 feet of runway remaining. The passenger stated that after departure, while climbing through 250 feet, the pilot began pumping the throttle as if he was trying to get more power out of the engine. The passenger did not notice a loss of engine power. As the pilot pumped the throttle, the aircraft stalled and entered a spin to the left from which it crashed. After the accident, the engine was operated to full power with no evidence of failure or malfunction. The fuel oil mixture appeared normal in color, the engine showed no damage from oil starvation, and the spark plugs had deposit coloring consistent with normal operation. No evidence of malfunction of the aircraft structure or flight control systems was found. A representative of the company that produced the aircraft kit stated the aircraft on floats with the 65 horsepower engine was under-powered and that they normally did not fly it with 2 persons onboard. The passenger noted that the cabin doors were locked open and that there was a lot of noise in the aircraft. The company representative said the aircraft flew fine with the doors locked up, although this would reduce performance.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin and subsequent collision with the terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's failure to use all available runway, and his failure to recognize the reduced performance of the aircraft, when it was configured with floats, and was flown with two occupants aboard, with the doors locked open.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA141
- Event ID
- 20001208X07793
- Case number
- MIA97LA141
- 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: 7f5651d90cfe6ce7bfad9d4b21665bbc603b5ae257b893a8bff497fe3a8271e9; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:59:31.636Z.