CEN15CA036 · Flight Design Gmbh CTLSi
Flight Design Gmbh CTLSi · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Benson Airport (6MN9) to Benson Airport (6MN9)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA036
- 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
Flight Design Gmbh CTLSi
- Aircraft type
- Flight Design CTLSI
- 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
- N549CT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Benson Airport (6MN9), White Bear Lake, MNTo Benson Airport (6MN9), White Bear Lake, MN
- 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
- Landing
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting touch-and-go landings. During his second approach, he reported that the airplane flew over the runway at 60 knots, he stalled the airplane too high, and the airplane impacted the runway "very hard" and bounced high. He reported that instead of executing a go-around, he tried to regain control of the airplane and after several bounces, the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and firewall.
The pilot verified that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
As a safety recommendation, the pilot reported that he could have executed a go-around.
The Federal Aviation Administration has published the Airplane Flying Handbook FAA-H-8083-3A (2004). This handbook discusses the roundout portion when landing and states in part:
Sometimes when the airplane appears to temporarily stop moving downward, the roundout has been made too rapidly and the airplane is flying level, too high above the runway. Continuing the roundout would further reduce the airspeed, resulting in an increase in angle of attack to the critical angle. This would result in the airplane stalling and dropping hard onto the runway. To prevent this, the pitch attitude should be held constant until the airplane decelerates enough to again start descending. Then the roundout can be continued to establish the proper landing attitude. This procedure should only be used when there is adequate airspeed. It may be necessary to add a slight amount of power to keep the airspeed from decreasing excessively and to avoid losing lift too rapidly.
It is recommended that a go-around be executed any time it appears the nose must be lowered significantly or that the landing is in any other way uncertain.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during the landing, which resulted in an inadvertent aerodynamic stall, a hard landing, and a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA036
- Event ID
- 20141031X13239
- Case number
- CEN15CA036
- 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: 5f23f918eb14ab7864133bd07bc5ba0e3874ef9be70f1bdeac777bd1a74a8e3f; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:54:09.074Z.