CEN11LA396 · Grumman G164 A
Barham Brothers Grumman G164 A · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From John H Hooks Jr Memorial Airport (M79) to John H Hooks Jr Memorial Airport (M79)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA396
- 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
Grumman G164 A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G164
- 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
- N2LU
- Operator
- Barham Brothers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John H Hooks Jr Memorial Airport (M79), Rayville, LATo John H Hooks Jr Memorial Airport (M79), Rayville, LA
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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 flight instructor was demonstrating agricultural, low-altitude operations to the pilot. The instructor reported that he noticed a loss of engine power when making a turn; the airplane then descended and impacted the tops of several trees. The airplane fell nose first through the thick wooded canopy, coming to rest in the trees in a mostly nose-down attitude. The pilot reported that the instructor had been flying the airplane slowly while in wingover turns and that the stall light would regularly flicker on and off during the climbing turns. He added that the instructor did not increase the engine power setting before impact and that the airspeed was low immediately before the airplane impacted the trees.
The instructor did not report using carburetor heat during his low-altitude operations but did report that he was operating at a reduced power setting. An examination of the airplane showed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although a carburetor icing probability chart indicated that an airplane operating in the ambient conditions at the time of the accident could expect a risk of carburetor icing while at cruise power and a serious risk of carburetor icing while at glide power, it is more likely that the airplane entered into an aerodynamic stall at an altitude too low for the pilot to recover based on the account given by the pilot.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent impact with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA396
- Event ID
- 20110616X44506
- Case number
- CEN11LA396
- 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: 87d2e8d46ff8385d64d21f9a9ef2c3f1a57ef65feb806fa29e5562ae5f630cb9; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:17:55.990Z.