NYC97LA087 · Pitts S1C
Pitts S1C · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 38D to Lebanon Municipal Airport (M54)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA087
- 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
Pitts S1C
- Aircraft type
- Pitts S1
- 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
- N12073
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 38DTo Lebanon Municipal Airport (M54), Lebanon, TN
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff roll, the airplane veered left, and the pilot counteracted with right rudder. The airplane's left wing then dropped, and the pilot rotated at 70 knots to avoid a wing strike. As the airplane became airborne, it rolled inverted to the left. The pilot applied full forward elevator; however, the airplane settled and impacted the ground. The pilot had 1 hour in make and model, and he reported that the crosswind conditions and his lack of experience in make and model contributed to the accident. About 25 miles west at Akron, OH, the 1251 EDT wind was from 010 degrees at 11 gusting 26 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the initial takeoff climb. Factors relating to the accident were the pilot's lack of experience in the make and model of airplane, and the gusty crosswind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA087
- Event ID
- 20001208X07997
- Case number
- NYC97LA087
- 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: 06c7518dfce4c2af1cb9c1c1d849a90f0f1761fd7b2f44a260fd2d83eba30451; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:27:25.344Z.