NYC04LA044 · SOCATA TBM 700
SOCATA TBM 700 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Reading Regional Airport (Carl A Spaatz Field) (RDG) to Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA044
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
SOCATA TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N700QD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reading Regional Airport (Carl A Spaatz Field) (RDG), Reading, PATo Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Norwood, MA
- 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
- Airframe › Ice
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, not performed
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 departed while it was snowing. The pilot reported that becoming airborne, the airplane, "...began to shake severely...." The pilot tried to climb; however, the airplane would not climb and it continued to settle. The pilot performed a forced landing in an field, about 3,200 feet from the departure end of the runway. The company director of operations (D/O) reported that when he examined the airplane about 45 minutes later, there was rough granular ice on the top surface of the wing that conformed to the outline of the fuel tanks. The rough granular ice was not found on the horizontal stabilizer. The pilot reported that he elected not to use liquid deicing fluid on the wings because the snow was blowing off of the top of the wings when the airplane was pulled from the hangar. The D/O further reported that the airplane had been refueled with 177 gallons about 2 hours prior to departure and then the airplane was placed in an unheated hangar with the door open. The fuel came from a truck that had been kept in a heated hangar.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to not apply de-icing fluid to the wings prior to takeoff, which resulted in snow/ice contamination on the of the wings, a stall mush, and a forced landing in an open field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA044
- Event ID
- 20031209X02013
- Case number
- NYC04LA044
- 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: a02bd6f80b7f90a73e296804346c7b1381b70009319f2be5cf9cd6d228d20291; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:06:42.365Z.