WPR20LA229 · Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2004 Bravo
Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2004 Bravo · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Martin Field (S95) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA229
- 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
Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2004 Bravo
- Aircraft type
- Tecnam P2004
- 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
- N846JM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Martin Field (S95), College Place, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and pilot-rated passenger departed on a personal flight. During the climb out after a touch and go landing, the airplane lost lift about 15 ft above ground level and settled back toward the runway, contacting it hard. Subsequently, the airplane veered off the right side of the runway and sustained substantial damage to the right wing and fuselage. The pilot reported that he moved the flaps slightly to the upward position during the takeoff portion of the touch and go. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
It is likely that as the airplane flew out of ground effect, the pilot’s retraction of the flaps before attaining climb speed created a situation in which the airplane did not have sufficient power to accelerate and climb.
Probable cause
The pilot’s premature retraction of the flaps which resulted in the airplane settling back onto the runway, contacting it hard, and veering off the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA229
- Event ID
- 20200720X04711
- Case number
- WPR20LA229
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-07-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 14c96b1e8762530e66f5d31de2d5ad2df2e860530867711695992517c23240e7; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:12:12.505Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. S95 is Martin Field at College Place, WA, which is also the recorded accident location; College Station is a city in Texas, not the airport's city.