WPR20LA270 · Piper PA 14
Piper PA 14 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Redding Municipal Airport (RDD) to Spalding Airport (1Q2)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA270
- 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
- 2 · 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
Piper PA 14
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-14
- 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
- N91449
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Redding Municipal Airport (RDD), Redding, CATo Spalding Airport (1Q2), Susanville, CA
- 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
- 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
- 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
The accident airplane’s takeoff run from a dirt runway was not observed. However, while taxiing his airplane toward the airport’s only asphalt runway, a friend of the accident pilot and pilot-rated passenger observed the accident airplane in a steep left turn about 350 ft above the runway. The airplane then transitioned into a nose-down dive, consistent with a loss of control following an accelerated stall, which resulted in impact with terrain.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies with the engine or airframe that could have precluded normal operation. An experimental propeller that was designed for a more powerful engine was attached to the engine at the time of the accident. The propeller’s blade angle was excessive for the engine-propeller configuration, which would have slowed the propeller. This, in turn, would have led to an overall decrease in performance, further degrading the airplane’s ability to climb as the density altitude was nearly double the field elevation of the departure airport when the accident occurred. Additionally, the airplane may have been over its gross weight; however, this could not be determined as the fuel quantities at the time of departure were unknown. The airplane had vortex generators installed, which may have slightly reduced the airplane’s stall speed, but this performance improvement was not guaranteed as stated by the manufacturer.
The investigation was unable to determine whether the pilot performed any preflight performance computations, which would have showed that the airplane required 3,750 ft of runway surface to clear a 50 ft obstacle given the temperature and density altitude. Although there was no need to clear a 50 ft obstacle that day, and this performance information was for a lower performance engine than the one he had installed, a conscientious pilot would have exercised caution during the takeoff attempt after reviewing this performance data. However, the witness observation of the airplane altitude is consistent with the pilot performing a high rate of climb departure after takeoff.
The pilot’s toxicology testing demonstrated previous use of cocaine, but no active cocaine in his system at the time of the event. The investigation was unable to determine if he had any impairment from cocaine withdrawal at or near the time of the accident and whether his cocaine use contributed to the accident circumstances due to a lack of available evidence.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to conduct a steep departure at a high-density altitude and the exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during a climb, which resulted in an accelerated stall and subsequent loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the installation of a high pitch angle propeller that was not designed for the installed engine which likely degraded the airplane’s performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA270
- Event ID
- 20200815X84754
- Case number
- WPR20LA270
- 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, cause areas. 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: ad623d5c4646c2c12788930a215850f2d2f513623994fe63c4eebeefaacff8fe; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:18:17.246Z.