LAX99LA210 · Bellanca BL-14-13
Bellanca BL-14-13 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From L17 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA210
- 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
Bellanca BL-14-13
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca BL-14
- 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
- N74476
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L17To 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Flight control, aileron › Reversed
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inaccurate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft had just come out of major repair and restoration by the pilot, with the supervision of an airframe and powerplant mechanic, and this was the first flight since the repairs. The pilot stated that he did not reference a manual when making any of the repairs. The pilot did a brief preflight inspection, which only included checking the flight controls for movement, not to verify their correct movement. After departure, about 30 feet agl, the aircraft rolled left, the pilot applied right control inputs, but the left bank angle increased. The left wing tip struck the ground and the aircraft cartwheeled once, coming to a rest 50 feet from the runway. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Inspector examined the aircraft and found the aileron control cables to be crossed and reversed. When interviewed by the FAA inspector, the pilot stated that the aircraft had been examined by the mechanic, but following the inspection, the pilot had made further repairs to the control system without the mechanic's knowledge.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain control of the aircraft due to the aileron control cables being crossed and reversed. The pilot's lack of a thorough pre-flight inspection and the pilot not referencing a manual during the repairs on the aircraft is also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA210
- Event ID
- 20001212X19025
- Case number
- LAX99LA210
- 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: 3479d3484b2d047e6d5e4872d52ec148e1e95fdb3968164b836fec99503b2ea3; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:57:34.232Z.