LAX05FA029 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to FFZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05FA029
- 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-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N6854P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZTo FFZ
- 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
- Destroyed
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 airplane entered a departure stall in the takeoff initial climb and impacted the ground on the ramp underneath a wing of a parked airplane. The airplane had been participating in a fly-in at the airport on the day of the accident. During the air show the pilot had placed his airplane on static display and was also going to offer rides in the airplane for a fee. The accident occurred on the first flight of the day with a passenger onboard. A compilation of witnesses observed the airplane liftoff at a steep pitch angle after a short ground run. About 100 feet above the ground the airplane started to turn to the left and the left wing and nose dropped. The airplane rotated 180 degrees to its direction of takeoff and collided with the ground, coming to rest underneath the wing of a parked airplane. The airframe and engine were inspected with no mechanical anomalies noted that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to obtain and maintain an adequate airspeed during the takeoff initial climb, which resulted in a stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05FA029
- Event ID
- 20041116X01821
- Case number
- LAX05FA029
- 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: 873d71cb7ef13a74e2b3aab7b0115554a43e582539517bbac8ef278b0d41e1db; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:12:55.759Z.