NYC08FA189 · Grumman American AA-1C
Hortman Aviation Grumman American AA-1C · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08FA189
- 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-1C
- 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
- N9555U
- Operator
- Hortman Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor and student pilot had completed one touch-and-go landing and the airplane was in the departure climb, when the pilots were instructed by an air traffic controller to "make right traffic." The airplane entered a right turn, and was observed at a "high angle of attack" just prior to entering a descending 90-degree right bank. The airplane struck a parked trailer and skided across the ground, coming to rest under a row of parked trailers. A post-crash fire ensued. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no pre-impact mechanical anomalies. The Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) for the airplane listed a stall speed of approximately 65 mph at a bank angle of 20 degrees, and 90 mph at a bank angle of 60 degrees. The POH listed a rotation speed between 60 and 65 mph and a normal climb speed of 95 mph.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA189
- Event ID
- 20080605X00797
- Case number
- NYC08FA189
- 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, 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: 5cb659e24bfebe6e69d81cc1b9846a471a1443da0bf266212d5513785a12021e; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:06:09.419Z.