CHI98LA314 · Valentin TAIFUN 17E
Valentin TAIFUN 17E · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From C02 to Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA314
- 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
Valentin TAIFUN 17E
- Aircraft type
- Valentin TAIFUN 17
- 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
- N17NT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C02To Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW), Kenosha, WI
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper climb rate, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that the airplane settled during initial climb into trees off the right side of the runway. Witnesses said that the airplane attained a steep nose high condition after liftoff, climbed to about 50 to 60 feet above ground level, prior to impact with trees. One witness thought the airplane encountered a stall prior to impact. Subsequent to the accident an examination of the airplane failed to reveal any pre-accident anomalies with the airplane or its systems.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control and obtain proper climb rate during initial climb after takeoff. A factor was trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA314
- Event ID
- 20001211X10803
- Case number
- CHI98LA314
- 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: 2bd3c02272f2079efc418e7e86ff70c755150c65264f4d7021876bb32e74adb0; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:08:00.524Z.