ERA11FA332 · Cessna 152
Space Coast Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Merritt Island Airport (COI) to Okeechobee County Airport (OBE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA332
- 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
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N48869
- Operator
- Space Coast Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island Airport (COI), Merritt Island, FLTo Okeechobee County Airport (OBE), Okeechobee, FL
- 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
- 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
The flight departed on a visual flight rules personal flight and did not return to the operator’s home base at its scheduled time. The operator began calling other airports trying to locate the airplane and cell phone companies in an attempt to locate the pilot by her cell phone. The Federal Aviation Administration issued an Alert Notice; after several hours of searching the wreckage was located. There were no witnesses to the accident.
Review of radar data revealed that in the last few minutes of flight the airplane made several maneuvering turns. The reason the pilot chose to maneuver in that location is unknown. The final maneuvers included a 70-degree right turn to a heading of 180 degrees. About 2 minutes later, the airplane made a 360-degree left turn, and radar contact was lost. The radar data was consistent with cruise speed throughout the flight, except for the last return, which indicated that the airplane had slowed significantly. Postaccident wreckage signatures were consistent with a spinning descent and impact, indicating that the airplane likely entered an aerodynamic stall from which the pilot did not recover.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA332
- Event ID
- 20110610X33355
- Case number
- ERA11FA332
- 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: dfb073d6e0cf658dca592374f275fec15474b3a150e1fbd71e6a46633652d06b; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:27:15.495Z.