ERA10FA037 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX) to Cyril E. King Airport (TIST)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA037
- 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
- 3 · 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
Cessna 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N3431T
- Operator
- David S. Bentley · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX), ChristianstedTo Cyril E. King Airport (TIST), Charlotte Amali
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and a passenger, a perspective flight student, completed a preflight inspection of the airplane. Another passenger subsequently approached the airplane with two heavy bags. The first passenger put the larger bag in the baggage compartment, behind the rear seat. The second passenger then walked around the airplane and sat in the back seat with the smaller bag. During the takeoff, witnesses stated that the airplane appeared slow, with a nose-high pitch attitude, and an immediate dip of the right wing. They recalled the initial climb out was also low and slow. The tower controller asked the pilot if he was experiencing any difficulty, and the pilot responded that he was, and was going to turn back to the airport. A witness noted that the airplane appeared to be having difficulty gaining altitude, that the wings were moving up and down, and that the propeller was spinning. The airplane then made a sudden, sharp left turn and descended to the ground. A postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical anomalies. Damage was consistent with a left-turning stall/spin at impact. The airplane's observed nose-high attitude, and pitch trim found in the full nose-down position, indicated the likelihood that the airplane was loaded with an aft center of gravity.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to ensure proper loading of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA037
- Event ID
- 20091029X54134
- Case number
- ERA10FA037
- 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: 47417f12e9c7283ce4626cd74f384033418660ea50d33b6ba8e25a1e77e95b45; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:32:50.500Z.