LAX03FA207 · Globe GC-1B
Globe GC-1B · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK) to O17 · Grass Valley, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03FA207
- 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
- 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
Globe GC-1B
- Aircraft type
- Globe GC-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
- N78053
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK), Truckee, CATo O17 · Grass Valley, 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
- 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 maintained
- Pilot in command › Rotation, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff initial climb while in a high nose pitch attitude, the airplane banked to the right and impacted the runway. Several witnesses at the airport, who are pilots, observed the accident sequence. As the airplane lifted off the runway surface, the airplane's nose was in an unusually high pitch attitude. Several feet above the surface, the airplane's landing gear folded into the retracted position as the angle of attack continued to increase. The airplane stalled, and the right wing and nose impacted the ground simultaneously. Examination of the engine and airframe revealed no evidence of pre-mishap catastrophic mechanical malfunction or failure of any system. The airplane has a maximum gear retraction operating speed of 80 mph and does not have a stall warning horn or light. The landing gear system is operated by a hydraulic pump driven by an electrical motor. The mechanic who worked on this airplane said the gear pump motor was the original factory installed one, which was underpowered and resulted in slow gear retraction times. The pilot had recently installed a more powerful engine, which would require a steeper climb attitude to maintain a speed at or below the maximum gear operating speed while the landing gear completes the retraction cycle. The density altitude was calculated to be about 7,700 feet.
Probable cause
an in-flight loss of control due to the pilot's rotation to an excessive pitch up attitude after takeoff and his failure to maintain an adequate airspeed, which resulted in a stall. Factors in the accident were the high density altitude and the lack of stall warning devices on the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03FA207
- Event ID
- 20030712X01075
- Case number
- LAX03FA207
- 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: 7517a4bea86a934e8b6d410b44193d7d8586da6aaf367c12f2b3afd4e1147c1b; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:04:55.577Z.