DEN07FA158 · Evektor-Aerotechnik a.s. SportStar
Evektor-Aerotechnik a.s. SportStar · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Erie Municipal Airport (EIK) to Erie Municipal Airport (EIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07FA158
- 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
Evektor-Aerotechnik a.s. SportStar
- Aircraft type
- Evektor SPORTSTAR
- 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
- N616EV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, COTo Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, CO
- 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/spin
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Stall/spin, 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 accident flight was the student pilot's first instructional flight towards a Light Sport Pilot certificate. He was receiving instruction from a commercial pilot with a flight instructor certificate (CFI). According to multiple witnesses, the airplane entered a spin while turning from the upwind leg to the crosswind leg following a touch-and-go landing. The airplane impacted terrain in a left wing down, nose low attitude. Postaccident examination of the airplane and its systems revealed no mechanical anomalies. The investigation disclosed that the airplane was over the certified gross weight at the time of departure for the accident flight. A review of the Aircraft Operating Instructions provided by the manufacturer, revealed insufficient data to accurately calculate the effects of density altitude on the performance of the airplane for takeoff and landing. The manual also lacked sufficient data to calculate the fuel burn of the airplane for any altitude higher than an international standard altitude of 2,000 feet. This additional information is not specified as a requirement by the current ASTM consensus standards. Density altitude at the time of the accident was calculated to be 7,800 feet. As no mechanical reason was discovered for the loss of control, it is likely the CFI allowed the airspeed to decay until an inadvertent stall occurred, and he was unable to recover prior to impact.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed during takeoff-initial climb to avoid a stall/spin. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's inadequate preflight planning, his failure to calculate the airplane's weight and balance, the high density altitude, inadequate information for preflight planning provided by the manufacturer, and the insufficient standards for Pilot Operating Handbook information required by the ASTM consensus standards.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07FA158
- Event ID
- 20070918X01410
- Case number
- DEN07FA158
- 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: 4940317928f4742d9f8b1f1e877d0ae0b3fc78e5cbd0e3fbfb2f0586ce79f67b; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:17:00.959Z.