ERA25LA133 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA20-C1
Ka Holdings Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA20-C1 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From FEF · Manassas, VA to Culpeper Regional Airport (CJR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA133
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA20-C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA20
- 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
- N373AM
- Operator
- Ka Holdings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FEF · Manassas, VATo Culpeper Regional Airport (CJR), Culpeper, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2006)
- 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 on ground
- 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
Following an uneventful flight and taxi back to the runway, the student pilot reported that when he applied takeoff power, the airplane began to veer to the left. He applied right rudder, but the control input was ineffective. He then reduced the power to idle and applied both brakes, but the airplane exited the left side of the runway and came to rest in a drainage ditch. The pilot was uninjured, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and empennage. Postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the flight controls, braking system, or the nose wheel that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the takeoff roll, resulting in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA133
- Event ID
- 20250304199792
- Case number
- ERA25LA133
- 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: investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f065c379b732a5b53867ab21316f1682403637350a146ac4deaa7109b550ffa0; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:42:17.237Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Misspelled city; CJR is Culpeper Regional Airport, Culpeper, VA, spelled Culpeper in the record's own location field.