Skip to content

DEN89LA158

1989-07-07 · BOUNTIFUL, Utah, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport BTF

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

THE PILOT FAILED TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE SPEED FOR THE TURNING MANEUVER (TO AVOID AN OBSTACLE) AND INADVERTENTLY ALLOWED THE AIRCRAFT TO STALL. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS WERE: IMPROPER UUSE OF THE FLAPS, HIGH DENSITY ALTITUDE, AND A HIGH OBSTRUCTION.

Factual narrative

AFTER MAKING A TOUCH-&-GO LANDING, THE PLT BEGAN A TAKEOFF WITH 10 DEG OF FLAPS. THE FLT MANUAL RCMDD TAKEOFFS BE MADE WITH THE FLAPS FULLY RETRACTED, EXCEPT FOR SHORT FIELD TAKEOFFS OR TAKEOFFS ON SOFT OR ROUGH FIELDS WITH NO OBSTACLES AHEAD. THE PLT STATED THAT AFTER CLIMBING TO ABOUT 300' AGL, HE NOTED THE ACFT WAS NOT CLIMBING PROPERLY & THAT THE ENG DID NOT SEEM TO BE PROVIDING FULL POWER. HE DID NOT CHECK THE ENG INSTRUMENTS TO VERIFY THE ENG PERFORMANCE. HE LOWERED THE NOSE TO ACCELERATE & STARTED A RIGHT TURN TO AVOID AN OBSTACLE. AT ABOUT THAT TIME, THE ACFT STALLED, THEN CRASHED BEFORE THE PILOT COULD RECOVER FROM A DESCENT. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE ENG WAS DEVELOPING POWER AT IMPACT. A TEARDOWN OF THE ENG REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF A PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION. DENSITY ALTITUDE AT THE ARPT WAS APRX 6500'. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1989_DEN89LA158.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Search this event elsewhere

External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.

Related research

Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall). All research papers