LAX03LA185 · Cessna 175A
Cessna 175A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Ash Fork, AZ (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA185
- 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
Cessna 175A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N6902E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ash Fork, AZ (private airstrip)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
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot collided with trees during the takeoff initial climb. When the pilot departed runway 2 with full fuel and retracted flaps, he was aware of a quartering tailwind he believed to be around 10 knots. The normal procedure was to depart to the north, due to the downward sloping runway. He flew in and out of the airstrip regularly and did not find the current weather conditions unusual. In the past, the pilot calculated the takeoff distance many times, and usually required about 900 feet to rotate. He could not remember if he had performed any takeoff calculations using the weather and airplane conditions immediately prior to the accident. The trees that the airplane collided with were located about 60 feet from the north end of the runway and were approximately 12 feet tall. Due to the slope of the terrain, the treetops were at the runway elevation. The runway was described as being in "poor condition." Density altitude was about 9,800 feet msl. No mechanical problems were noted with the airplane prior to the accident. The pilot stated that future accidents could be prevented by not departing from short airstrips with a tailwind.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain and maintain an adequate airspeed, which resulted in a stall mush condition. Factors were the loose and uneven dirt runway surface, the known tailwind with gusts, and high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA185
- Event ID
- 20030612X00861
- Case number
- LAX03LA185
- 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: a26e81bbb880bdfe66e249e03fb90fabdaeb9dc5c5eb74a7d3d29e78b1ddbecb; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:27:52.817Z.