CEN13FA416 · Taylorcraft BC12-65
Father John 77 Flying Club Taylorcraft BC12-65 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Dalton Airport (3DA) to Dalton Airport (3DA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA416
- 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
Taylorcraft BC12-65
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft BC12
- 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
- N36466
- Operator
- Father John 77 Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dalton Airport (3DA), Flushing, MITo Dalton Airport (3DA), Flushing, MI
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was an instructional flight with a student pilot and a flight instructor onboard. Video evidence from a ground-based source indicated that the airplane was in a nose-high left turn at a moderate bank angle. As the turn progressed, the airplane appeared to pitch down, and the left bank steepened before the airplane left the frame of the video. The location of the camera indicated that the airplane was making a turn in the traffic pattern from the base leg to the final approach.
Examination of the airplane after the accident confirmed continuity of the flight control systems. Engine examination confirmed crankshaft and valve train continuity. Although the magnetos would not produce a spark, impact damage would have prevented normal operation. No preimpact anomalies were detected that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane, engine, or related systems. Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the airplane's airspeed diminished during the turn to a point where the airplane stalled and entered a spin.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed during the landing approach, which led to a stall/spin, and the flight instructor’s failure to monitor the approach and provide remedial action before the stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA416
- Event ID
- 20130717X71905
- Case number
- CEN13FA416
- 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, coordinates. 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: b4a90a854c5fe508e802b2a204fc82e7dc4c0bb3bbd782b5580240d762088d40; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:00:46.845Z.