WPR10LA381 · Advertising Mgmt & Consulting Velocity Super XLRG5
Advertising Mgmt & Consulting Velocity Super XLRG5 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during initial climb
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA381
- 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
- 2 · 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
Advertising Mgmt & Consulting Velocity Super XLRG5
- Aircraft type
- Advertising Mgmt Consulting VELOCITY SUPER XLRG5
- 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
- N444YP
- Operator
- Gregory B Crane · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, CATo Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CA
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In a postaccident interview, the pilot reported that he did not remember taxiing out for takeoff with the right passenger door open but that he did remember that the right door was open after takeoff and that he advised the control tower operator of his intention to return to the airport. The pilot recalled that, during the return maneuver, there was a vibration, as if the door had come off and struck the rear-mounted propeller, which prompted him to make an emergency landing on a nearby golf course. A witness at the airport reported seeing the right passenger door open during taxi and takeoff.
The right passenger door was located about 1 mile west-southwest of the accident site. A postaccident examination revealed that the door’s locking mechanism was intact and that the lower forward section of the door showed black rubber signature marks that were consistent with contact with the engine drive belt, which was found separated from the engine. Additionally, the cambered surfaces of each of the three propeller blades exhibited rubber impact marks. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preaccident anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. A flight instructor reported that, during a postaccident conversation, the pilot told him that he simply missed locking the copilot door and that this resulted in the separation of the door from the airframe.
Probable cause
The pilot did not close and secure the right passenger door, which resulted in an in-flight separation of the door and subsequent loss of engine power due to the door’s collision with the rear-mounted engine assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA381
- Event ID
- 20100802X01751
- Case number
- WPR10LA381
- 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: ed9b40c0d92abcc399e33f5f6c935540bc6c6457e57676d9073c27a4898fb4d6; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:58:43.556Z.