DEN00LA155 · Trammell AVID FLYER
Trammell AVID FLYER · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Perry Stokes Airport (TAD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA155
- 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
Trammell AVID FLYER
- Aircraft type
- Trammell AVID FLYER
- 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
- N7081M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry Stokes Airport (TAD)To 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Wing, bracing strut › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that on departure climb out, everything appeared normal. Suddenly, at 1,000 feet agl, he reported losing all flight control. He said the amateur built experimental airplane continued to turn to the left, and he had no elevator control. The airplane gradually spiraled down until it hit the ground. Postaccident examination revealed that the left lift strut tube threaded attachment rod had broken. The kit manufacturer said that there are approximately 1,700 airplanes flying that utilize this wing attachment assembly, and the manufacturer has no record of any similar failures. The pilot said that he built the airplane in 1989, and it was substantially damaged in 1991. He said that he purchased new wings and most of the hardware was replaced new. He said that he replaced the left strut attachment bracket on the rebuilt airplane. It was not determined why the left lift strut attachment rod failed.
Probable cause
the failure of wing lift strut attachment rod for an unknown reason, which resulted in a loss of aircraft control during initial takeoff climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA155
- Event ID
- 20001212X21713
- Case number
- DEN00LA155
- 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: db95f300de1798252630b489d495490bf1723bfcbb534739c03dfabf188b19d3; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:29:30.258Z.