LAX82FUQ15 · Quickie QAC-1
Quickie Aircraft Quickie QAC-1 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Mojave, CA to Mojave, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX82FUQ15
- 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
Quickie QAC-1
- Aircraft type
- Quickie QAC-1
- 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
- N82X
- Operator
- Quickie Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mojave, CATo Mojave, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fuselage › Failure, partial
- Fuselage › Inadequate
- Fuselage › Overload
- Fuselage › Separation
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate airframe
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS BUILT AS A ONE-TIME ONLY ACFT FOR RECORD BREAKING DISTANCE FLYING, PRESUMABLY FOR AN AROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT WITHOUT REFUELING. IMMEDIATELY AFTER TAKEOFF, THE PLT RADIOED THE CHASE PLANE THAT HE HAD SOME MINOR PROBLEM & WAS GOING TO LAND. AFTER TURNING FINAL THE PLT REPORTED "SOMETHING BROKE, I'M GOING IN..." THE ACFT CRASHED AT A SLIGHT NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE 1/2 MI FROM THE END OF THE RWY. CONTINUITY OF FLIGHT CONTROL WAS ESTABLISHED & NO EVIDENCE OF PREIMPACT FLIGHT CONTROL WAS EVIDENT. THERE WERE NO DRAWINGS OR DATA AVAILABLE FOR THE DESIGN OF THE ACFT. THE FUSELAGE & EMPENNAGE REPORTEDLY HAD NOT BEEN STATIC TESTED. A BREAK AT THE REAR OF THE COCKPIT APPEARED TO BE IN AN AREA OF POOR DESIGN. THE COMPOSITE STRUCTURE BEHIND THE COCKPIT RAILS LOOKED QUESTIONABLE IN ITS CROSS-SECTIONAL AREA TO HANDLE THE BENDING LOADS IN THIS AREA. AN IN FLIGHT SEPARATION OF THE FUSELAGE AT THE REAR OF THE COCKPUT BY AS MUCH AS 1 INCH WOULD HAVE PLACED THE STABILIZER IN A 3 DEG NOSE UP ANGLE RENDERING THE ELEVATOR INSUFFICIENT TO HOLD THE NOSE UP.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX82FUQ15
- Event ID
- 20020917X03709
- Case number
- LAX82FUQ15
- 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: cd5eb996573cc47d1cb296c5b5b42d9c2f13e07bc49d12abbc64a8776db6350e; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:09:13.253Z.