MIA00LA210 · James Browning MIDGET MUSTANG-I MIDGET MUS
James Browning MIDGET MUSTANG-I MIDGET MUS · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Southwest Georgia Regional Airport (ABY)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA210
- 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
James Browning MIDGET MUSTANG-I MIDGET MUS
- Aircraft type
- James Browning MIDGET MUSTANG-I
- 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
- N114JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Southwest Georgia Regional Airport (ABY), Albany, GA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness, a licensed aviation mechanic who observed the aircraft during the takeoff, stated that about 300 feet above ground level, the aircraft pitched nose up and entered an abrupt roll, followed by a 60- to 70-degree bank. The witness also said that the aircraft had lost altitude and airspeed during the maneuver, and it impacted the ground, and was destroyed. He stated that the airplane did not appear to malfunction, but it looked as if the pilot either pitched the nose up and stalled the airplane, or attempted a snap roll maneuver at a low altitude, and did not recover prior to impacting the ground. The witness later represented the FAA, and examined the accident airplane, and found that there was continuity to all flight control surfaces. The pilot stated that during initial climb, his headset wire was restricting his head movement, and while adjusting the headset, he accidentally knocked his spectacles off, and lost control of the aircraft.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control during initial climb that resulted in the aircraft colliding with the ground and incurring damage. A factor in the accident was the pilot's diverted attention, when he inadvertently knocked the spectacles off his face while adjusting his headset.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA210
- Event ID
- 20001212X21542
- Case number
- MIA00LA210
- 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: 2f45412ed11992ad11d23f2effad9a6c59e57259b093318aa08865ecfa60f6de; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:10:11.671Z.