CEN12LA153 · SOCATA TBM 700
SOCATA TBM 700 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA153
- 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
SOCATA TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N850LM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN), Madison, WITo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that moderate rime ice had accumulated on the airplane during the inbound flight to the fixed-base operator (FBO). FBO employees reported seeing 1 1/2- to 2-inch thick ice on the wings' unprotected surfaces, the left wing's radome, and the propeller spinner and around the stall indicator when the airplane arrived. The pilot removed some of the ice with his hand and declined an offer to have the airplane deiced or put it in a heated hangar. Subsequently, the airplane was parked outside at the FBO for about 1 hour, during which time it was snowing and sleeting. Witnesses reported that they did not see the pilot check the tail surfaces for ice and that, when the airplane taxied for takeoff, they saw ice on portions of the airplane, including the radome, and snow on the wings' surfaces. The pilot reported that, during takeoff, the left wing dropped and was not generating lift, likely due to the ice on the airplane's surface. The airplane veered left, impacted terrain, and then caught on fire before coming to rest. A postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any failure that would have resulted in the loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that ice and snow were removed from the airplane’s surfaces during the preflight inspection, which resulted in an inadvertent aerodynamic stall after takeoff and loss of control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA153
- Event ID
- 20120210X20307
- Case number
- CEN12LA153
- 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: 86b4fd5b01a87edfd759bebe77caca3d177dd1c0ff67142515729df857a56900; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:13:14.064Z.