CEN14LA243 · Hoffius Stowe CHALLENGER II
Hoffius Stowe CHALLENGER II · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Covington, IN (private airstrip) to Covington, IN (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA243
- 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
Hoffius Stowe CHALLENGER II
- Aircraft type
- Hoffius Stowe 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
- N824SH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Covington, IN (private airstrip)To Covington, IN (private airstrip)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal flight in the amateur-built light sport airplane. The airplane was maneuvering at low altitude before it descended and then impacted the ground. Examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions.
The forward fuselage and right wing were crushed, consistent with a nose-low, right-wing-low impact. The airplane's attitude at impact was consistent with a steep descending right turn that would occur after a stall. Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot did not maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering at a low altitude and exceeded the airplane's critical angle-of-attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
The airspeed indicator was marked for airspeeds from 40 to 340 mph, but the airplane's stall speed was 32 mph, and its maximum speed was 105 mph. The large discrepancy between the airplane's performance capability and the airspeed indicator markings made the airspeed indicator inappropriate for installation in the accident airplane and would not have provided the pilot airspeed information as he neared the stall speed. The lack of appropriate airspeed information due to the inappropriate airspeed indicator likely contributed to the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and prevent the stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed and his exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle-of-attack while maneuvering at low altitude, which led to an aerodynamic stall and loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the installation of an inappropriate airspeed indicator that did not provide airspeed indications near the airplane’s stall speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA243
- Event ID
- 20140516X74742
- Case number
- CEN14LA243
- 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: 3502dbc7eb776c25c784781f2730c5797d835b395951ab519a64a987717f8ae5; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:17:48.487Z.