LAX03LA120 · Beech 19A
Beech 19A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8) to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA120
- 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 19A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 19
- 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
- N7610R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8), Coalinga, CATo Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, 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
- 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/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff initial climb the airplane collided with terrain at the departure end of the runway. The pilot set 10 degrees of flaps for takeoff from the 2,820-foot runway. He rotated at 60 mph and once the airplane was airborne he noticed that the "aircraft was slow to climb." He leveled the nose, and gradually raised the flaps. The airplane settled, collided with the ground, and came to rest just past the end of the runway in an onion field. The pilot said the aural stall warning was operating throughout the attempted climb out. The Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III, Model 19A, Owner's Manual states that there are 3 flap settings; 15 degrees, 25 degrees, and 35 degrees. It states the following takeoff procedure, "After the airplane breaks ground, lower the nose slightly and let the airplane accelerate to the desired climb speed." Additionally, takeoff speed for 15 degrees of flaps is 60 mph, and 75 mph for no flaps. No anomalies were found during a post accident test run of the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain/maintain an adequate airspeed, which resulted in a stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA120
- Event ID
- 20030402X00422
- Case number
- LAX03LA120
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-03-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 887ef894edbc539190ec0feb028b4552e87416c75a8e669794e1bf4f761302fb; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:27:12.346Z.