ERA13CA354 · Stetson Norman B CHALLENGER II
Stetson Norman B CHALLENGER II · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Orange Municipal Airport (ORE) to Orange Municipal Airport (ORE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA354
- 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
- 0 · 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
Stetson Norman B CHALLENGER II
- Aircraft type
- Stetson Norman 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
- N94454
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MATo Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MA
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing for his first flight in the airplane. According to a statement provided by the pilot to the airport manager, the airplane was about 50 feet above ground level when the left wing dropped. The pilot reported that he attempted to correct the wing drop by manipulating the ailerons only; however, he was unsuccessful in leveling the airplane. He then applied left rudder while applying right aileron and the airplane began to spin to the left. The airplane impacted the ground in an approximate 10-degree nose down, left bank attitude, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. According to Federal Aviation Administration records and photographs of the Hobbs meter, the airplane had accumulated 8.9 hours in the 2 years since the pilot had purchased it. The pilot stated that these hours had been accumulated during taxi tests, and that the accident flight was his first attempt to fly the airplane. According to the pilot, there were no mechanical malfunctions or abnormalities that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of total flight experience in the accident airplane make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA354
- Event ID
- 20130807X24106
- Case number
- ERA13CA354
- 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: 17f13655486bb583cc128484cdb79f2b7909f6f97cacc1d562274f169638ce5f; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:26:55.432Z.