GAA18CA067 · Todd Foley ZENITH 701
Todd Foley ZENITH 701 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK) to Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA067
- 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
Todd Foley ZENITH 701
- Aircraft type
- Todd Foley ZENITH 701
- 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
- N701TF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK), Mount Airy, NCTo Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK), Mount Airy, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2016)
- 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 pilot of the experimental, amateur-built airplane reported that, during takeoff, he raised the nose after reaching about 20 mph, and about 40 mph, the airplane lifted off the runway. He "held the stick back just a little [too] long and it started to tip stall to the left and [he] pushed the stick forward." He added that he applied right aileron and rudder because the airplane was drifting to the left side of the runway. Subsequently, the airplane aerodynamically stalled and bounced on the runway, and the right wheel separated from the airplane. He then, with full power, continued to fly and make right aileron and rudder inputs to get back over the runway. The airplane impacted the ground and came to rest inverted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, and wings.
The automated weather observation system at the accident airport reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 090° at 4 knots. The pilot was departing from runway 18.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA067
- Event ID
- 20171202X94738
- Case number
- GAA18CA067
- 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: df37d52cc59a5f038488ff50bb2173d10f951bdacdfa1c20494053d4471c99c3; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:03:49.345Z.