CEN10FA233 · JetProp DLX Piper PA46 350P
JetProp DLX Piper PA46 350P · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin en route
From Barkley Regional Airport (PAH) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA233
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
JetProp DLX Piper PA46 350P
- Aircraft type
- Jetprop DLX Piper PA46
- 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
- N135CC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Barkley Regional Airport (PAH), Paducah, KYTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot was issued a clearance to descend to 4,000 feet for radar vectors to a nonprecision instrument approach in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The last 1 minute 23 seconds of radar data indicated the airplane leveled at 4,000 feet for about 35 seconds and then varied between 3,800 feet and 3,900 feet for the remainder of the flight for which data was available. During this timeframe, the airspeed decreased from 131 knots to 57 knots. Witnesses observed the airplane descending in a spin, and one reported hearing the engine running. Recorded engine data showed an increase in engine power near stall speed, which was likely the pilot's response to the low airspeed. The airplane damage was consistent with a low-speed impact with some rotation about the airplane's vertical axis. The pilot did not make any transmissions to air traffic control indicating any abnormalities or emergency. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. During training on the accident airplane, the instructor recommended that the pilot get 25 to 50 hours of flight in visual meteorological conditions before flying in IMC in order to gain more familiarity with the radios, switches, and navigation equipment. The pilot only had 14 hours of flight time in the accident airplane before the accident flight, however it could not determined whether this played a role in the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed in instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA233
- Event ID
- 20100503X93719
- Case number
- CEN10FA233
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-05-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2c7ff883b21c7bc85c22f8a91684fc5feafaab724459f6013148b377ce387ae8; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:47:10.893Z.