CEN11LA546 · Reinboldt Richard A CHALLENGER II
Reinboldt Richard A CHALLENGER II · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during takeoff
From Reedsburg Municipal Airport (C35) to Reedsburg Municipal Airport (C35)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA546
- 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
Reinboldt Richard A CHALLENGER II
- Aircraft type
- Reinboldt Richard CHALLENGER
- 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
- N340BR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reedsburg Municipal Airport (C35), Reedsburg, WITo Reedsburg Municipal Airport (C35), Reedsburg, WI
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 pilot and passenger departed the airport’s south runway for a local flight. Several witnesses reported that the airplane reached an altitude of about 300 feet, the left wing dropped, and the airplane descended and impacted the ground in a near vertical attitude. The airplane’s ballistic parachute system was partially deployed, but the airplane was too low at deployment for the parachute to fully deploy. An examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact abnormalities that would have precluded normal operation. A handheld global positioning system (GPS) unit was located in the wreckage and downloaded. A plot from the GPS indicated that the airplane departed from runway 18 and tracked westward in a large circle before it returned to the airport. The track then showed that the airplane descended as it approached the airport from the southwest and was aligned with the runway at an altitude that corresponded with the runway’s altitude. The airplane then climbed to an altitude of 1,027 mean sea level (msl) (about 122 feet above ground level [agl]) and started a left turn. The final GPS point showed the airplane at an altitude of 1,035 msl (about 130 feet agl) and at an airspeed of 47 mph. Based on the events, it is likely that the pilot did not maintain adequate airspeed and the airplane entered a power-on stall during takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot did not maintain adequate airspeed during takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA546
- Event ID
- 20110804X04035
- Case number
- CEN11LA546
- 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: 57b9e056d53c3fad2fee46a9c5d6d068aa2a40c26ce050dd9278dde09fceee19; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:41:32.236Z.