ERA10LA206 · Center Charles C X-5
Center Charles C X-5 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Ghent, NY (no airport) to Pittsfield Municipal Airport (PSF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA206
- 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
Center Charles C X-5
- Aircraft type
- Center Charles X-5
- 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
- N25761
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ghent, NY (no airport)To Pittsfield Municipal Airport (PSF), Pittsfield, MA
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following two uneventful flights, the pilot and passenger took off; witnesses described a takeoff and initial climb sequence that was consistent with a loss of lift due to an aerodynamic stall before the airplane impacted the ground in a nose-down attitude and caught fire. The witnesses also described smooth and continuous engine operation to ground impact. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures were discovered during a postaccident examination of the wreckage.
Postmortem toxicological testing of the pilot was positive for ethanol, a prescription opioid narcotic known to impair the mental and/or physical abilities required for the performance of hazardous tasks, and a prescription antidepressant. While some of the ethanol detected in the testing may have been produced postmortem, the measured serotonin metabolite ratio implied alcohol consumption by the pilot in the 16 hours prior to the accident flight. Given the pilot's long-term, chronic narcotic use, he may have developed some tolerance to the sedating, mental, and physical effects associated with the detected quantity of the drug. Although the investigation was unable to determine the degree of the pilot’s impairment, since the concentrations of the prescription opioid narcotic detected were well above a normal therapeutic range, it is likely that the pilot was impaired.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the initial climb, resulting in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's impairment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA206
- Event ID
- 20100404X15924
- Case number
- ERA10LA206
- 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: 531cdf8920e9139dd59918b6a428439cafcb059a8f6502fe2698288038f140d2; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:44:49.460Z.