LAX00LA149 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT) to Fresno, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA149
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2500T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, CATo Fresno, CA
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Dual student › Short field takeoff/procedure, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was on his third solo flight, his first unsupervised. After applying power for a short field takeoff, the student aborted and the airplane began to veer to the left side of the runway. A runway light was hit as the airplane moved into the unpaved area adjacent to the airstrip. In order to decelerate the airplane, the student pulled back on the controls, but the airplane floated before settling again. The airplane continued through the unpaved area and impacted on the taxiway surface where the nose gear collapsed. The short field takeoffs were requested by the instructor prior to the flight. The student's logbooks indicate that he received instruction in short field takeoff procedures on April 8 and 10, 2000.
Probable cause
The student pilot's loss of directional control on takeoff that resulted in a collision with a taxiway surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA149
- Event ID
- 20001212X20849
- Case number
- LAX00LA149
- 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, coordinates. 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: c59bd80b1383a1be701ce3e76f79e9460b7e263fdfc78fcf0e4262904bf6561f; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:59:08.335Z.