FTW03FA071 · Grumman American AA-1A
Grumman American AA-1A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Shreveport Downtown Airport (DTN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03FA071
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
Grumman American AA-1A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-1
- 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
- N9226L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shreveport Downtown Airport (DTN), Shreveport, LATo 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
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The personal flight originated as a flight of two airplanes. The father of the passenger flying in the trail position was flying the lead airplane on a local formation flight. The pilot of a Cessna 120 departed first and kept looking back to observe the position of the trailing aircraft. During the climb out, the pilot of the lead airplane observed an airplane below and behind him entering a spin to the right. The lead pilot failed to recognize the spinning airplane as his trailing aircraft. After being unable to contact the trail airplane, the pilot contacted the tower and reported that the airplane may have gone down. The wreckage of the airplane was found in an open meadow within 4 miles of the departure end of the runway. Signatures of the damage sustained by the airplane were consistent with a flat spin to the right. The non-instrument rated private pilot had accumulated a total of 125 hours of flight, with approximately 50 hours in the accident airplane. The local fire department was alerted as to the possibility of an aircraft accident at 1359; however the aircraft was not located from the air until 1427, approximately 41 minutes after the accident. The airplane ELT was found in the off position with an expired battery. Flight control continuity was established to all flight control surfaces. The engine was satisfactorily ran for over 12 minutes following the recovery of the airplane. No anomalies were found with the engine or airplane that would have prevented normal operation. No evidence of an in-flight fire was found either on the airframe on the pilot. There was no evidence of an in-flight fire was found.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed resulting in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03FA071
- Event ID
- 20030106X00017
- Case number
- FTW03FA071
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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, coordinates. 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: bc4dc8e701db0f4326dfbc8e7ea50593bd05ef9b9680c8ead05ded3616baee27; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:32:08.293Z.