LAX04LA191 · North American Aviation Div. Navion
North American Aviation Div. Navion · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Page Municipal Airport (PGA) to Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA191
- 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
North American Aviation Div. Navion
- Aircraft type
- North American Aviation Div NAVION
- 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
- N91729
- Operator
- Ken Whittall-Scherfee
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Page Municipal Airport (PGA), Page, AZTo Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), Grand Canyon, AZ
- 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, 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 airplane stalled and collided with terrain in the takeoff initial climb. A witness reported that after liftoff the airplane climbed out of ground effect and stalled. The airplane returned back into ground effect, and the pilot lowered the nose to regain speed. He rotated out of ground effect, and subsequently stalled. The airplane returned to ground effect and, again, the pilot attempted to regain speed. As the airplane was approaching a cliff, it lifted out of ground effect and banked to the right. The left wing appeared to stall and the airplane impacted terrain in a nose and left wing low attitude. Based upon the atmospheric conditions provided by the METAR, the density altitude was calculated to be 4,896 feet. A Federal Aviation Administration maintenance inspector examined the airplane after the accident. He reported that he ran the engine, and found no anomalies or malfunctions that would have resulted in a decrease in power.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to attain and maintain a sufficient airspeed, which led to an inadvertent stall mush in high density altitude conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA191
- Event ID
- 20040625X00869
- Case number
- LAX04LA191
- 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: 5636c05804d06e4ab4e167395fefd49b3fc64fa12057c220119a0f76bd7bc5b0; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:46:20.421Z.