CEN11FA420 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Farmdale, OH (private airstrip) to Farmdale, OH (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA420
- 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
- 1 · 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N71687
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Farmdale, OH (private airstrip)To Farmdale, OH (private airstrip)
- 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 · 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 accident airplane was observed entering a near-vertical climb shortly after taking off from the private airstrip. The airplane continued in the near-vertical climb to about 300 feet above the ground before it turned to the left and entered a nose-down descent toward the runway. One witness described the aerobatic maneuver as a wingover or a hammerhead. Another witness stated that the airplane appeared to stall at the apex of the vertical climb, before it entered the left turn and nose-down descent. The same witness reported hearing the engine operate at a high speed during the descent. Several witnesses noted that the airplane impacted the grass runway as it was recovering from the dive. Given the witness statements, and that the pilot reported completing two flights earlier in the day during which he had performed aerobatic maneuvers near the private airstrip, the airplane likely stalled while the pilot was performing the maneuver. The pilot reported having no recollection of the accident flight besides performing an uneventful takeoff. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to initiate an aerobatic maneuver at an altitude that did not allow for full recovery of the airplane before ground impact.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA420
- Event ID
- 20110626X60527
- Case number
- CEN11FA420
- 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: 82c9a3e13a37e197c38c6198102901ee428943bd239023e4a41b409c14915c72; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:28:46.479Z.