CEN13LA244 · Dean Leslie N HIGHLANDER
Dean Leslie N HIGHLANDER · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB) to --- · Bryan, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA244
- 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
- 0
- 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
Dean Leslie N HIGHLANDER
- Aircraft type
- Dean Leslie HIGHLANDER
- 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
- N58LD
- Operator
- Leslie Dean
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB), Ann Arbor, MITo --- · Bryan, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A passenger onboard the accident airplane reported that it was approaching the runway to the east when the pilot noticed another airplane landing in the opposite direction on the same runway. The passenger stated that the pilot was using the radio and called in. The pilot made a hard left turn and advanced the throttle to full forward to avoid the other airplane. He added right aileron, but the airplane did not respond and continued turning left until it impacted terrain. It is likely that because of the slow airspeed, the aileron control input was not effective and the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. According to the pilot of the other airplane, during the landing flare, he noticed the accident airplane landing in the opposite direction, so he aborted the landing and climbed straight ahead.
The pilot of the other airplane stated that he was monitoring frequency 122.8 MHz. Postaccident examination of the accident airplane revealed that the radio was set to 122.5 MHz as the active position and 122.8 MHz in the standby position; therefore, the pilot of the other airplane would not have heard his radio communications. At the time of the accident, the Bryan Aero Park did not have a common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF) for pilots to communicate on while operating at the air park. As a result of the investigation, Bryan Aero Park management has adopted 122.8 as the CTAF for pilots to communicate on while operating at the field.
Although evidence indicates that the pilot had severe coronary artery disease, high cholesterol, and hypertension, no evidence was found indicating that the pilot's cardiac issues contributed to the accident. Also, the investigation was unable to determine whether or not the pilot's diabetes or his use of sertraline contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed during a go-around, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA244
- Event ID
- 20130429X11346
- Case number
- CEN13LA244
- 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: 6d1e9d77b7f865fc60e120888a2f5a3bcd5989688f9774b4839a8864a2c340d6; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:56:07.105Z.