ERA12FA130 · Piper PA-25-235
Flying Weaners Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG) to Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA130
- 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
Piper PA-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N7408Z
- Operator
- Flying Weaners
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG), Jacksonville, FLTo Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG), Jacksonville, 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was climbing out after picking up a banner. A security camera video showed the airplane climbing with the banner trailing behind before it disappeared from the camera’s view. Shortly after, witnesses observed the banner free falling to the ground and the airplane in a right spin before it impacted a parking lot in a nose-down attitude. Postaccident examination revealed no malfunctions or abnormalities that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The levels of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, also known as marijuana) and the Tetrahydrocannabinol Carboxylic Acid (THC metabolite) detected in the pilot’s blood during toxicological testing indicated that he had recently used THC. Although the investigation could not determine precisely when the pilot had last used THC, the levels detected indicated that the pilot was impaired and most likely posed a hazard to flight safety. Autopsy results also identified preexisting moderate-to-severe cardiomyopathy; however, there is no indication that this heart condition contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's in-flight loss of control during climb after a banner pickup. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's impairment due to marijuana.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA130
- Event ID
- 20111231X23658
- Case number
- ERA12FA130
- 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: 41b92caaa66c58ce724d8dbe2390616ca7752f26009b3dceecf6ba6da8afb5ca; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:06:50.729Z.