DEN88FA120 · Luscombe 8E
Luscombe 8E · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Skypark Airport (BTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN88FA120
- 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
- 1 · 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
Luscombe 8E
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N71646
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Skypark Airport (BTF), Bountiful, UT
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS 1 OF 3 THAT WERE LNDD ON A GRAVEL ROAD NEAR A TRUCK STOP WHERE THE OCCUPANTS HAD BREAKFAST. DRG DEPARTURE, THE 1ST 2 ACFT TOOK OFF WITHOUT INCIDENT. WITNESSES RPRTD THAT WHEN THE 3RD ACFT (N71646) TOOK OFF, THE PLT BEGAN A LEFT TURN AT ABOUT 75' AGL, THEN THE ACFT BEGAN LOSING ALTITUDE. THE PLT STATED THE ACFT ENCOUNTERED 'ENOUGH TAILWIND AND/OR DOWNDRAFT (DUE TO FREEWAY ELEVATION) TO CAUSE LOSS OF AIRSPEED.' SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT DSCNDD & CRASHED ON A SOUTHERLY HEADING. ONE OCCUPANT WAS A 3-1/2 YEAR OLD CHILD, WHICH WAS BEING HELD ON HIS MOTHER'S LAP WHEN THE ACFT TOOK OFF. HE RECEIVED A FATAL HEAD INJURY DRG THE OCCURRENCE. THE PLT INDICATED THE WIND WAS FROM THE NORTH OR NORTHEASTAT 10 TO 15 KTS, BUT SAID THE WINDSOCK (ON A NEARBY BUILDING) WAS HANGING LIMP. DENSITY ALTITUDE WAS APRX 6400'.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN88FA120
- Event ID
- 20001213X25916
- Case number
- DEN88FA120
- 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: 8a539c5311e3c5d4c4bb715dbdf5159d24bb5871bdcf8506f6b50726686318f2; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:41:51.880Z.