ERA22LA062 · Maxair DRIFTER
Maxair DRIFTER · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA062
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Maxair DRIFTER
- Aircraft type
- Maxair DRIFTER
- 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 not recordedTo 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot reported that as, he maneuvered the airplane to land in an open field, his flight path was nearing people and a building, so he added power, however too much power was added. This resulted in the nose of the airplane pitching up rapidly, which was followed by an aerodynamic stall and a nose low impact in the field. The airplane’s tail boom, fuselage, and wings sustained substantial damage. A video taken from the ground captured nearly the entire accident flight. Its contents largely corroborate the pilot’s account of what happened. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane. He further reported that the accident flight was only his second flight in the airplane and he had not received any flight training to fly this airplane prior to flight. He believed the airplane was an “ultralight”, however, due to the fuel tanks size and number of seats, it did not meet the criteria stated in Code of Federal Regulations Part 103.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot’s decision to operate the airplane without flight training or a pilot certificate and his loss of control shortly after takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA062
- Event ID
- 20211116104253
- Case number
- ERA22LA062
- 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: 905442a832e026e3d6b5987cc88f386de6eb1ef913ae9fa6f9b0cb737e18f9f3; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:44:54.889Z.