GAA16LA032 · Philip D Anderson 601 XL
Philip D Anderson 601 XL · Accident: cabin safety event during takeoff
From Hemet Ryan Airport (HMT) to Redlands Municipal Airport (REI)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16LA032
- 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
Philip D Anderson 601 XL
- Aircraft type
- Philip D Anderson 601
- 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
- N467SD
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hemet Ryan Airport (HMT), Hemet, CATo Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Cabin safety event
- 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 sport pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, after completing the before takeoff checks, he initiated the takeoff roll, rotated the airplane, and then climbed it to about 80 ft above ground level, at which point the canopy opened. The canopy began "bobbing up and down," so the pilot aborted the takeoff and landed on the remaining available runway. The pilot reported that he "lost perspective" during landing and that the airplane impacted the runway hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings.
The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical anomalies or malfunctions that would have prevented normal operation. The pilot further reported that he taxied to the runway with the canopy unsecured and that he could not recall if he secured the two latches before takeoff or if the "mental checklist" he used included securing the canopy. Postaccident photographs of the canopy latching mechanism showed that the mechanism appeared undamaged and functional; therefore, it is likely the pilot did not secure the canopy before takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the airplane's descent rate during a precautionary landing, which resulted in hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to secure the canopy before takeoff, which precipitated the precautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16LA032
- Event ID
- 20151028X02418
- Case number
- GAA16LA032
- 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: 0fe638b4c4d55bbd4ef5683048f25cb16885ebfefd57706e22a7784e00b60687; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:55:51.607Z.