EVERY Pilot Makes This Takeoff Assumption… Once!

EVERY Pilot Makes This Takeoff Assumption… Once!
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#fligdebrief #plaincrash #planecrash
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EVERY Pilot Makes This Takeoff Assumption… Once!
On a hot August afternoon in Northern California, a small, classic taildragger lifted off from Susanville Municipal Airport.
The engine sounded normal. The weather was good. There were no warnings, no obvious signs of trouble.
But just seconds after takeoff, the airplane rolled into a steep turn and never recovered.
What makes this accident so unsettling is not just the outcome, but how quickly everything unraveled. This was an airplane with a healthy engine. Two people on board who both understood flying. And yet, only a few hundred feet above the ground, it entered a stall that left no room to recover.
So today, we’re going to slow this down. Step by step.
We’ll look at what happened, what investigators found, and why the real danger in this accident may have been present long before the wheels ever left the runway.
EVERY Pilot Makes This Takeoff Assumption… Once!
The aircraft involved was a Piper PA-14 Family Cruiser, registration N91449. It’s a light, tailwheel airplane originally designed in the late 1940s. Compared to modern general aviation aircraft, it has modest power and relatively limited performance margins, especially during takeoff and climb.
On this day, the airplane was operating as a private Part 91 flight. The plan was simple. The occupants had flown from Redding, California, to Susanville for lunch and were now preparing to depart again. It was a familiar route, in an environment they knew well.
EVERY Pilot Makes This Takeoff Assumption… Once!
There were two people on board. One was acting as the pilot. The other was a pilot-rated passenger. Both were experienced enough to understand the basics of aircraft performance and local conditions. There was no indication of pressure to rush, no deteriorating weather, and no emergency driving the departure.
Earlier that afternoon, the airplane landed normally at Susanville. After taxiing, it positioned itself to depart again, this time from the asphalt runway. As the aircraft taxied out, a friend of the occupants — flying another airplane — watched the departure from nearby.
That detail matters, because it provides an external view of what happened next.