CEN09LA611 · McKenna James E AVID-CATAL
McKenna James E AVID-CATAL · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Inks Lake, TX to Burnet Municipal Airport/Kate Craddock Field (BMQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA611
- 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
McKenna James E AVID-CATAL
- Aircraft type
- Mckenna James AVID-CATAL
- 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
- N1945J
- Operator
- Eachus, Jim C. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Inks Lake, TXTo Burnet Municipal Airport/Kate Craddock Field (BMQ), Burnet, 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The amphibian airplane had a known history of taking on water when operating on the water. On the day of the accident, the pilot attempted to take off, but was unable. He had commented to a witness that he could not take off due to the water in the plane. The pilot removed the airplane from the lake and attempted to drain the water for about 15 minutes before he attempted another takeoff. Witnesses observed the airplane accelerate across the lake, pull up into a steep angle to about 50 feet, and then bank left into the water. Due to impact damage, inspectors on scene could not determine how water may have leaked into the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to take off with a known airframe deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA611
- Event ID
- 20090930X21219
- Case number
- CEN09LA611
- 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, 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: 83698274048e522064a2a479fda7bca5b8484ca9a1a4706836039a75f7b9677a; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:30:03.362Z.