SEA97LA109 · Learjet 35A
Professional Flight Crew SVCS Learjet 35A · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA109
- 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
Learjet 35A
- Aircraft type
- Learjet 35
- 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
- N1AH
- Operator
- Professional Flight Crew SVCS
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF)To Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TX
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Airspeed(vmc) › Not obtained/maintained
- Emergency procedure › Improper
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain reported: 'Shortly after V1...there was a loss of power to the left engine....' (FAR Part 1 defines V1 as takeoff decision speed.) However, the first officer, who was the pilot flying, stated the captain retarded power on the left engine as a training exercise. The first officer stated there was no preflight discussion of emergency procedure practice. The airplane became airborne about 3,500 feet down the runway; the crew subsequently lost control of the aircraft, and it crashed to the left of the runway, and a fire erupted. The crew escaped with minor injuries. A teardown of the left engine was performed under FAA supervision at the engine manufacturer's facilities; the engine manufacturer reported that damage found during the teardown 'was indicative of engine rotation and operation at the time of impact....' Both airspeed indicator bugs were found set 9 to 11 knots below the V1 speed on the takeoff and landing data (TOLD) card. No evidence of an aircraft or engine malfunction, to include inflight fire, was found at the accident site.
Probable cause
the captain's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, and the subsequent improper response to a simulated loss of engine power, resulting in liftoff at an airspeed below that for which sustained flight was possible.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA109
- Event ID
- 20001208X08023
- Case number
- SEA97LA109
- 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: 563616480c4a487559a34f1dcad77f5a15153d389f612214f3d057e1c4d0036f; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:26:58.782Z.