ERA10LA098 · Czech Aircraft Works Sportcruiser
Tidewater Flight Center Czech Aircraft Works Sportcruiser · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK) to Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA098
- 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
Czech Aircraft Works Sportcruiser
- Aircraft type
- Czech Aircraft Works SPORTCRUISER
- 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
- N524SC
- Operator
- Tidewater Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Chesapeake, VATo Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Chesapeake, VA
- 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
- 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 recently certificated pilot was receiving a check-out in the light sport airplane. He was performing slow-flight maneuvers, and because the airplane was already configured, the instructor suggested he perform a power-off stall. The pilot reduced power to idle, and as the airspeed decreased, he increased the pitch attitude to induce a stall. At the onset of the stall, the pilot added power, the airplane yawed left, and “snapped" into a tight spin to the left. The instructor announced that she had the flight controls, and the pilot released them. The instructor verbalized her spin recovery control inputs as she performed them, but the airplane continued to spin and lose altitude. The airplane eventually stopped spinning, and during the post-spin dive recovery, the airplane struck trees and terrain, and came to rest inverted.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the airplane's airspeed indicator's color code range markings were inaccurate and did not agree with the information published in the supplied airplane manufacturer's Pilot Operating Handbook (POH). Depending on the configuration of the airplane, the difference between the published indicated airspeed and the published calibrated airspeeds was as much as 20 knots. The indicated airspeed is an important value for the pilot as it directly indicates stall speed and various airframe structurally limited speeds, regardless of density altitude. If the pilot is receiving inaccurate information from the airspeed indicator, the airplane may stall at a higher airspeed than the pilot is anticipating.
The airplane also experienced a previous accident in which the improperly marked airspeed indicator contributed to the accident. While the airplane manufacturer agreed to make changes to the POH after that accident, those changes were not complete and the accident report was not published prior to this accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate recovery from a stall and inadvertent spin. Contributing to the accident was the improperly marked airspeed indicator and the airplane manufacturer's improper airspeed information. Also contributing was the instructor's inadequate supervision of the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA098
- Event ID
- 20091222X60740
- Case number
- ERA10LA098
- 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: eb74a8071d38cb348d299d75ab3e4d0f30c44c47c94869627ca0706345d841e5; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:35:10.677Z.