WPR25LA139 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40
Alameda Aero Club Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA139
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-40
- 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
- N22QT
- Operator
- Alameda Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2005)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a takeoff in a free-castering nosewheel equipped airplane, with a left quartering crosswind. As the airplane accelerated, he utilized right rudder to maintain runway centerline. When the airplane became airborne, it drifted to the right, over the grass area adjacent to the runway. The pilot applied left aileron to counteract the right drift, and the airplane pitched nose down. As he applied back pressure on the control stick, the stall warning horn activated, and he neutralized the flight controls. The airplane subsequently yawed left, and the pilot applied right aileron and rudder control inputs to correct the yaw and continued the takeoff. Following an uneventful landing, a postflight examination of the airplane revealed both wings and the rudder had struck the ground, which resulted in substantial damage to the rudder. At the time of the accident, the pilot was departing runway 28R, and the wind was from 290° at 7 knots. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during takeoff with a left quartering crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA139
- Event ID
- 20250422200049
- Case number
- WPR25LA139
- 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: 8f8bdea2b9230737a0bf42256e3e16f8e3de4d031614acd4989ed3cbfc1a667e; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:50:27.352Z.