LAX00LA174 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From 031 to 031
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA174
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N146TM
- Operator
- Thomas Noonan
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 031To 031
- 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 terrain/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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Dual student › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Weather condition › Crosswind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The runway is situated on a plateau with a windsock located at the departure end of the runway on a 30-foot steel pole. During climb out the airplane encountered a crosswind approximately 30 feet above the runway. Due to the unfavorable wind condition, the pilot was unable to maintain runway alignment and noted that the airplane did not gain altitude. The CFI took the control yoke and attempted to maintain airspeed and altitude while trying to avoid a vineyard. He noted that they were running out of suitable airport environment and terrain to make a forced landing and were not able to climb. In order to avoid the windsock, the CFI had to raise the nose; the airplane stalled and impacted a grassy area about 100 feet from the runway edge and about 20 feet below the airport.
Probable cause
Failure of the flight review pilot to compensate for the crosswind and maintain flying speed during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA174
- Event ID
- 20001212X20865
- Case number
- LAX00LA174
- 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: d0a9e9d91a423d7c6a51343fc7c51f91e9827221a1276d782fefb9479c7b24f6; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:56:40.718Z.