ERA11CA174 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Maysville, NC (no airport) to Maysville, NC (no airport)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA174
- 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
Piper J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N23249
- Operator
- Tommy R McFalls · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Maysville, NC (no airport)To Maysville, NC (no airport)
- 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 on ground
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot-in-command (PIC) of the tailwheel airplane stated that he was flying from his private airstrip, with a friend who was also a pilot. The friend did not have much experience in tailwheel airplanes and had not flown the airplane from the airstrip. The PIC completed two takeoffs and landings uneventfully, and then let his friend perform the third takeoff. During the takeoff roll, as the tailwheel lifted, the airplane yawed to the left. The PIC then took authority of the controls and attempted to correct the yaw. The airplane traveled off the left side of the runway and impacted trees, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and left wing. The PIC reported no preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airplane and added that the wind was light and variable at the time. The PIC stated that he should have taken control of the airplane sooner.
Probable cause
The pilot-rated passenger’s loss of directional control during takeoff and the pilot’s delayed remedial action, which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA174
- Event ID
- 20110302X64645
- Case number
- ERA11CA174
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: b03d80ae5231c0a6b04d731750f0e6f15317417ed4e394fea1b71c15299b9669; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:52:19.540Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure, destination. Misspelled city name; the town in Jones County, NC is Maysville. Misspelled city name; the town in Jones County, NC is Maysville.