FTW97LA351 · Brashears MONERAI-S
Brashears MONERAI-S · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Artesia Municipal Airport (ATS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA351
- 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
Brashears MONERAI-S
- Aircraft type
- Brashears MONERAI-S
- Category
- Unknown
- 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
- N5575S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Artesia Municipal Airport (ATS)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
- 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 handling, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The homebuilt motorized glider was observed on takeoff roll from runway 21 in calm wind. Witnesses reported that as soon as the aircraft broke ground, 'the aircraft assumed a very nose high attitude and stalled.' It impacted the ground in a left banking turn and nose low attitude. Witnesses further stated that the 22 horsepower engine continued to operate at high RPM after the aircraft impacted the ground. The co-owner of the airplane stated that he had flown the motorized glider 3 times prior to the accident and found it to have 'extremely sensitive controls.' He further reported that the flight controls in the glider were operated by a side stick located on the left side of the cockpit. He noted that 'there is a tendency to overcorrect the control inputs specially at low airspeeds in close proximity to the ground.' Also, the pilot said that for the last few years, he had been flying gliders, and before the accident, he had not flown a powered aircraft for over 13 years.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper handling of the aircraft during takeoff, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and collision with the terrain. A factor relating to the accident was: the pilot's lack of recent flight experience in the make and model of aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA351
- Event ID
- 20001208X08847
- Case number
- FTW97LA351
- 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: d025b67675ebfb7149ae779b18c4647578837a59bd8b86dbd85e9cc239c9c222; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:48:50.958Z.