CEN17LA275 · Golden Circle Air T-BIRD II
Golden Circle Air T-BIRD II · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Dunn Center, ND to Dunn Center, ND
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA275
- 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
- 0
- 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
Golden Circle Air T-BIRD II
- Aircraft type
- Golden Circle Air T-BIRD
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dunn Center, NDTo Dunn Center, ND
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1987)
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After filling the fuel tanks with fuel, the private pilot determined that the wind was about 7 knots from the north-northeast with gusts to 10 knots. He completed a preflight inspection and an engine run-up and then started the takeoff roll to the south on a gravel road. As the airplane lifted off, the left wing lifted. The airplane then rolled right and landed back on the road. With limited road available to stop the airplane, the pilot advanced the throttle and attempted another takeoff. The airplane did not lift off, and it continued through a fence and into a ditch. The airplane became airborne again, collided with power lines, and then descended nose first into the ground.
It is likely that a quartering tailwind lifted the airplane's left wing after liftoff and that the pilot did not adequately correct for it, which resulted in the airplane touching down again. The pilot decided to continue the takeoff attempt with insufficient road length remaining, during which the airplane collided with obstacles on the ground, which prevented the airplane from having sufficient airspeed to climb over obstacles beyond the end of the road.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control, his inadequate quartering tailwind correction during takeoff, and his decision to continue the takeoff to the south with insufficient road length remaining.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA275
- Event ID
- 20170719X21725
- Case number
- CEN17LA275
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-07-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0396893559b03994359ea8b9a8103bba937f7052d7fb7d8b11e5e34606cd5ac6; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:33:29.977Z.