LAX97LA220 · Cessna 152
DGV Holdings Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA220
- 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
Cessna 152 Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N96736
- Operator
- DGV Holdings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)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/mush
- 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
- Dual student › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Dual student › Lift-off, premature
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was a dual instructional flight with an 11-hour primary student, who was making the takeoff. The flight instructor reported that the student rotated at 50 knots. After they accelerated to 60 knots, the airplane began a roll to the right and aileron control was lost. He stated that the airplane began to sink at approximately 30 to 40 feet above ground level. The flight instructor added full power, but the airplane impacted the ground on the wheels and slid into two parked aircraft, a truck, and other ground structures. The aircraft was examined by an FAA airworthiness inspector and no discrepancies were found with the aircraft or control system. The CFI, who obtained his flight instructor certificate 2 months prior to the accident, had a total of 33 hours as a flight instructor, and 290 total hours.
Probable cause
The dual student's premature rotation and failure to attain/maintain an adequate airspeed, which lead to a stall/mush and loss of control in-flight, and the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight. A factor in this accident was the flight instructor's lack of total experience as an instructor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA220
- Event ID
- 20001208X08178
- Case number
- LAX97LA220
- 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: 9502e79c1fbfbe7f67d1de1233ee8d28cfc5df3030be664fd3a5a1b638e31518; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:23:45.992Z.