LAX99LA023 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH) to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA023
- 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
Piper PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N50JG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH)To Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NV
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Checklist, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses said the aircraft took off prematurely and over rotated to a nose high attitude. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft hit the ground tail first then the nose. The aircraft veered off the side runway and came to rest on a taxiway. The winds were reported as calm at the time. The pilot told the witness that he stalled on takeoff. Immediately after the accident, the position of the elevator trim tab and the cockpit elevator trim indicator were found in the full nose up trim positions. The pilot reported that the aircraft had a dead battery and required external power for the start. During this process, the autopilot cycled twice. The pilot stated that he performed a normal run-up and trimmed the aircraft for takeoff. He said that at 62 knots the autopilot ran the pitch trim to the full nose up position and the aircraft pitched prematurely to a nose high attitude and lifted off the ground. The pilot then retracted the landing gear. The left wing dropped and the airplane settled back to the ground. According to the auto pilot manufacturer, the pitch servo capstans are designed with a clutch that will slip at 25 pounds of control wheel force. According to flight test data supplied by Piper, the control wheel force required to hold 62-knot speed at full trim tab deflection would be less than 40 pounds.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the autopilot was off prior to takeoff, and, his failure to maintain pitch control during the resultant pitch trim excursion during the takeoff ground roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA023
- Event ID
- 20001211X11453
- Case number
- LAX99LA023
- 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: fca0db6cb7c74d4e2ef09cccd3e09834a10223d0ebf851f596d11bcd375aa609; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:19:15.248Z.