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ERA09LA531 · Daniel L Patrick Kolb Mark 111 Extra

20 Sept 2009 · Mystic, CT, United States

Daniel L Patrick Kolb Mark 111 Extra · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach

From Wychwood Field (CT48) to Wychwood Field (CT48)

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Event

NTSB case
ERA09LA531
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

Daniel L Patrick Kolb Mark 111 Extra

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
N208NS
Operator
Daniel L Patrick · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Wychwood Field (CT48), Mystic, CTTo Wychwood Field (CT48), Mystic, CT
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
Approach · VFR pattern final
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

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

According to the sport pilot, he was test flying the experimental airplane in the traffic pattern. While on final approach, with a flap setting of 20 degrees, he increased the flaps to 40 degrees. At that time, the airplane began to stall and he tried to increase engine power. He stated that when the airplane stalled, his airspeed was too slow and he was too low. The left main landing gear contacted the top of some trees and then impacted the ground. The pilot stated that he had about 4 hours in the accident airplane and that he was still test flying it. His total time in make and model was approximately 9 hours and his total pilot time was about 60 hours.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during final approach, resulting in an inadvertent stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of total flight experience.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA09LA531
Event ID
20090921X31912
Case number
ERA09LA531
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: c8683c063e74b6a477c48213f0b935b8e2e3a730e8f50a923a784e61b021c88c; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:19:53.648Z.