CEN17LA001 · Drake KITFOX SPEEDSTER
Drake KITFOX SPEEDSTER · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Jennings Airport (3R7) to Magnolia Airpark (LS77)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA001
- 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
Drake KITFOX SPEEDSTER
- Aircraft type
- Drake KITFOX SPEEDSTER
- 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
- N157D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jennings Airport (3R7), Jennings, LATo Magnolia Airpark (LS77), Slaughter, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that, during the initial climb after takeoff, he checked the airspeed and lowered the airplane's nose. He reported that the airplane rolled to the right, which he corrected, then the airplane "abruptly" rolled to the left. He was unable to correct the roll, and the airplane descended and impacted terrain. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions of the airplane. A witness reported that the airplane was airborne in a wings level, "very high" nose-up attitude when he first saw it. He stated that, after a few seconds, the left wing and the nose dropped. Shortly after that, the right wing dropped, the nose-down attitude increased, and the airplane impacted terrain. A video of the accident corroborated the witness account. The witness's recollection of the accident, along with the video of the accident airplane just before the accident, suggest that the pilot exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack during the initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during takeoff, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA001
- Event ID
- 20161003X51648
- Case number
- CEN17LA001
- 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: 92e114e4e70116098cbe4a0d7562476c917cec678062cefc893136e7a70599df; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:20:37.413Z.