ERA11FA348 · Piper PA-28-140
Aviation Unlimited Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1) to Destin Executive Airport (DTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA348
- 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
- 3 · 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
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N1803T
- Operator
- Aviation Unlimited
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1), Guntersville, ALTo Destin Executive Airport (DTS), Destin, 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
- 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
- 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
Several witnesses reported observing the airplane become airborne about two-thirds of the way down the departure runway. It then pitched up to a nose-high attitude of at least 20 degrees, leveled off about 40 feet above ground level, pitched up again to about the same pitch attitude, and subsequently descended behind a tree line with a high sink rate. Another witness reported seeing the airplane come over the tree line behind his residence and impact the ground in a nose-low attitude. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The witness observations are consistent with the pilot attempting to climb at too steep a pitch angle, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. According to calculations, the airplane’s weight was about 110 pounds over the maximum allowable takeoff weight, which would have resulted in reduced climb performance.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive pitch attitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall during the takeoff initial climb. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to comply with weight and balance limitations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA348
- Event ID
- 20110618X25841
- Case number
- ERA11FA348
- 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: 4759d73510405b6e62aa27c260ac476171b898ee6ddc7adbe75d537d41e8cf18; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:28:06.560Z.