CEN17LA032 · Boeing A75N1 (PT17)
Commemorative Air Force Boeing A75N1 (PT17) · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Mustang Beach Airport (RAS) to Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA032
- 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
Boeing A75N1 (PT17)
- Aircraft type
- Boeing A75
- 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
- N48182
- Operator
- Commemorative Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mustang Beach Airport (RAS), Port Aransas, TXTo Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP), Ingleside, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 76 years (built 1940)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a personal flight in the tailwheel-equipped airplane in the airport traffic pattern. He reported making two uneventful stop-and-go landings before the accident takeoff. The third takeoff was uneventful until the tail became airborne, and the airplane began to veer to the right. He applied back stick pressure to become airborne, and upon liftoff, the airplane continued to yaw right. He reduced airplane pitch to increase airspeed, but the airplane continued to yaw right, and it subsequently entered an uncommanded right roll with a slight nose-up pitch attitude. The pilot was unable to regain control with full left rudder and left aileron inputs, and the airplane impacted terrain in a right-wing-low attitude. The airplane subsequently nosed over and came to rest inverted.
Although the pilot believed a failure of the horizontal stabilizer caused the loss of control during takeoff, a postaccident laboratory examination determined that all observed separations were consistent with overstress failures due to impact-related damage; no materials anomalies were identified with any of the submitted components. It is likely the pilot did not maintain proper yaw and roll control during takeoff, which resulted in excessive adverse yaw upon liftoff. The pilot reported having flown 10 hours in the accident airplane make/model.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain proper yaw and roll control during takeoff, which resulted in excessive adverse yaw upon liftoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA032
- Event ID
- 20161101X00309
- Case number
- CEN17LA032
- 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: 92ba87f96c7d27137ee3ae9eb6acb429b74de32472cddc6b41285bbe01fc3fe9; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:48:06.258Z.