CEN09CA435 · Flight Design CTSW
L&C Burbank Flight Design CTSW · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From North Vernon Airport (OVO) to North Vernon Airport (OVO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA435
- 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
- 0 · 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
Flight Design CTSW
- Aircraft type
- Flight Design CTSW
- 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
- N218AW
- Operator
- L&C Burbank
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Vernon Airport (OVO), North Vernon, INTo North Vernon Airport (OVO), North Vernon, IN
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the landing flare the airplane pulled to the left. He added power and moved the control stick to the right, but without success, and inadvertently stalled the airplane. The airplane landed left wing low and on its nose after falling about three feet. The light sport airplane was not equipped with a stall warning horn. The airplane’s flight training supplement states the following about stalls: “The stall is noted through light buffeting. At 2 kts. (3 mph) above the stall speed, the rudder becomes “soft”. When flying close to stall speed, only the rudder and elevator are fully controllable. The ailerons have less effectiveness in very slow flight.”
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare which resulted in a stall and nose over during touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA435
- Event ID
- 20090714X02734
- Case number
- CEN09CA435
- 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. 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: 5a199de8f1e29cf590c1c844fadbf6f806b482fce53b62cbe3d28f3cc433a539; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:50:30.268Z.