ERA14LA330 · Zubair S Khan RAVEN
Zubair S Khan RAVEN · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV) to Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA330
- 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
Zubair S Khan RAVEN
- Aircraft type
- Zubair S Khan RAVEN
- 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
- N79ZR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), Shirley, NYTo Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), Shirley, NY
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2014)
- 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 airplane departed its home airport for a local flight. Radar data indicated that, about 9 minutes after departure, the airplane was at 7,400 ft mean sea level (msl) and had begun a left 270-degree turn. The last radar return, which was recorded about 1 minute later, showed the airplane about 1,100 ft msl, which correlates to an approximate 6,000 ft-per-minute descent. The airplane was found the following day floating on top of the water in a sound and was subsequently recovered. The pilot's parachute pack was found deployed and partially wrapped around the propeller. The airplane's canopy was not present; however, it was located several weeks later floating in the water. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any mechanical failure or anomaly that would have precluded normal operation.
The airplane's calculated center of gravity (CG) was about 3 inches beyond the aft CG limit, which likely induced longitudinal instability and led to a subsequent deep, unrecoverable stall. The canopy examination and the as-found condition of the parachute pack indicated that the canopy was likely opened in flight. Therefore, the pilot likely recognized that the stall was unrecoverable and attempted to bail out of the airplane but was unsuccessful.
Although toxicology testing showed that the pilot had used marijuana at some time before the accident, the low levels detected in the pilot's specimens indicated that he was not likely significantly impaired by its use at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the airplane was loaded within its calculated center of gravity limits, which resulted in longitudinal instability and a subsequent unrecoverable stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA330
- Event ID
- 20140707X50511
- Case number
- ERA14LA330
- 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: 5d820a44eab92946a5ae08c8b2f285ff48efbf77a78db30ef65ba1c9bb19bb78; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:21:18.637Z.