LAX04LA240 · Piper PA-25-235
Turf Soaring School Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From P48 · Peoria, AZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA240
- 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
Piper PA-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N4602Y
- Operator
- Turf Soaring School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P48 · Peoria, AZTo 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/spin
- 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 › Proper climb rate, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The tow plane stalled and impacted terrain following a nose high pitch excursion during a tow operation. The glider pilot, who was being towed at the time, reported experiencing a normal takeoff until about 100-150 feet above the ground. The tow plane then began to out climb the glider and slack developed in the tow line. The glider pilot released from the tow when she realized that while trying to chase the tow plane, the glider was nearing a stall speed. Witnesses to the accident observed the tow plane pitch nose high twice before it stalled and spun to the right. One of the witnesses was another pilot who flew the accident airplane on 12 previous flights that day. He reported observing no problems with the airplane during his flights that would have prevented its normal operation. Additional witnesses reported hearing a normal engine noise throughout the event. Post accident examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would have affected its flying abilities. Toxicological tests of samples from the pilot revealed the presence of phentermine, ephedrine, and pseudoephedrine. Phentermine is a prescription stimulant drug; ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are components of over the counter compounds and have stimulant properties.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain a proper pitch attitude during tow operations and his failure to maintain an adequate airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA240
- Event ID
- 20040616X00817
- Case number
- LAX04LA240
- 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: b3b3fe1869579180468f5998d27de68d3479a69253a6280f7b670a045f73679e; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:26:47.314Z.