ERA12FA149 · Aero Vodochody L39C
Aero Vodochody L39C · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD) to Burlington Alamance Regional Airport (BUY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA149
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Aero Vodochody L39C
- Aircraft type
- Aero Vodochody L39
- 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
- N16RZ
- Operator
- Thomas L. Coble · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, ALTo Burlington Alamance Regional Airport (BUY), Burlington, NC
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot radioed an air traffic controller and obtained an instrument flight rules clearance while on the ground. The pilot read back the clearance and was informed that he was released for departure and to switch to advisory frequency. There was no further radio contact between air traffic controllers and the pilot, and the airplane was never radar identified. The base of the radar coverage at the airport is 4,000 feet. Another pilot, who was on the ground at the airport waiting to depart, informed the controller that he watched the flight depart and heard a pretty loud boom shortly afterward. A postcrash fire ensued. The ceiling was 300 feet overcast, with visibility 1 mile in mist. The main wreckage was located about 1.1 miles south-southwest of the airport in a swampy wooded area. Postcrash examination revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control in instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA149
- Event ID
- 20120120X01941
- Case number
- ERA12FA149
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-01-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ec830b9df1bec4ff90cb7fab31b475ac15e4d23b870ef8d50e8034e9498dc93f; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:08:04.094Z.