LAX03LA083 · Beech 76
Palo Alto Flying Club Beech 76 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA083
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Beech 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N5400M
- Operator
- Palo Alto Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK), Truckee, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 on ground/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 › Directional control, not obtained/maintained
- Dual student › Preflight planning/preparation, not understood
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered off the runway and struck a snow bank off the left side of the pavement. The CFI briefed on an engine out procedure prior to takeoff and told the student he was going to fail the left engine. However, the pilot under instruction (PUI) did not fully understand the procedure. He believed that the engine failure would happen when they were in the air and not on the ground. During the takeoff roll, the CFI simulated the engine out by pulling the left mixture. However, the PUI did not pull the throttles to idle as briefed. He was surprised when the airplane started to veer to the left during the takeoff roll. He fixated on the rudder controls, and did not reduce engine power on the right engine. Both pilots stated that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
failure of the CFI to ensure that the pilot under instruction adequately understood the engine out procedure during the preflight planning phase of the flight; failure of the pilot under instruction to obtain/maintain directional control; and the inadequate supervision and delayed remedial action of the CFI during the engine out procedure. The pilot under instruction's misunderstanding of the engine out procedure was a factor in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA083
- Event ID
- 20030213X00217
- Case number
- LAX03LA083
- 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, coordinates. 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: 9aa68b7b6963e1ecedf642cf323d851fb7547bc2f5e154bbe01ffaf81e9fea6f; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:40:00.388Z.