CEN09LA445 · Marvin Faulk TINKER BELL
Marvin Faulk TINKER BELL · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41) to Jasper County Airport Bell Field (JAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA445
- 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
Marvin Faulk TINKER BELL
- Aircraft type
- Marvin Faulk TINKER BELL
- 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
- N62431
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), La Porte, TXTo Jasper County Airport Bell Field (JAS), Jasper, TX
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aerodynamic 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Several days before the accident, a witness observed the airplane during takeoff while it was about 20 feet above ground level (agl). The airplane appeared to be attempting to climb but remained at a low altitude. The airplane cleared the trees at the edge of the airport and the witness eventually lost sight of it. On the day of the accident, other witnesses observed the airplane at approximately 100 to 200 feet agl during its takeoff. The airplane did not appear to be climbing and the engine was still running when the airplane began to descend, maintaining a nose up attitude all the way to impact. The airplane came to rest upright, with crush damage to the fuselage. The engine and both wings were partially separated. The pilot did not hold a pilot certificate and the airplane had never been issued an airworthiness certificate.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during takeoff, which resulted in a collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA445
- Event ID
- 20090720X01037
- Case number
- CEN09LA445
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 7e2715a7c0da158abc612760fd32a68a156611db8a6fe9623a673787793365bd; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:55:15.490Z.