ERA13FA412 · Joseph Bender MUSTANG II

The pilot/owner/builder had received an airworthiness certificate for the airplane nearly 2 years before the accident, but he had not flown the airplane. He and witnesses reported that he had been conducting taxi-testing of the airplane on the day of, and for months before, the accident. Witnesses indicated that, on the day of the accident, the airplane had just lifted off from runway 28 at "full power" when the wings rocked steeply first to the left, and then to the right. One witness described the attitude of the airplane as a "knife edge." The airplane descended, impacted the parallel taxiway, and continued into a hangar, where it was mostly consumed by post-crash fire. The witnesses described the sound of the engine as smooth, continuous, and at "full power" until ground contact, suggesting that the pilot had not attempted to abort the high-speed taxi test/takeoff. Immediately after the accident, the pilot reported to witnesses that he had intended to fly and that the airplane was responding to his control inputs. Before being transported to the hospital, the pilot reported to police that he had been conducting several high-speed taxi tests to identify ground-handling issues with the airplane. He stated that he had never flown the airplane, had not intended to fly, and that the airplane "suddenly" lifted from the runway. Once airborne, he was unable to control the airplane, and it subsequently descended into the ground and caught fire. Due to the pilot's contradictory statements, it could not be determined whether the accident flight was the result of an accidental takeoff during a high-speed taxi test or a premeditated intent to conduct a first test flight of the airplane.

Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no obvious evidence of any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures; however, due to the damage sustained during the impact and the post-impact fire, the airplane's specific pre-accident on-ground and in-flight handling characteristics could not be qualified or evaluated. In an interview following the accident, a local flight instructor stated that the pilot had no flight experience in the accident airplane make and model and had only flown once in the 3 1/2 years before the accident, which was a flight review with the instructor. The instructor stated that he had accompanied the pilot during ground tests of the airplane and that during those tests, he found the airplane was "uncontrollable." When asked by the pilot if he would perform the initial flight testing of the airplane, the flight instructor refused because he thought the airplane was "unsafe." He counseled the pilot to obtain instruction in the accident airplane make and model, and when the pilot dismissed that notion, he advised the pilot to obtain instruction in a "high performance tail-dragger." The pilot also dismissed that advice and said he had learned to fly in a relatively low performance tailwheel-equipped airplane and that was adequate training for the accident airplane.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset