CEN15LA169 · Hoke Bobby F RANS S 12
Hoke Bobby F RANS S 12 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Cherokee County Airport (JSO) to Cherokee County Airport (JSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA169
- 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
Hoke Bobby F RANS S 12
- Aircraft type
- Hoke Bobby RANS S 12
- 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
- N154BH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherokee County Airport (JSO), Rusk, TXTo Cherokee County Airport (JSO), Rusk, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 1995)
- 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 downwind
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger had purchased the experimental amateur-built airplane about 2 weeks before the accident flight and was conducting a familiarization flight with a private pilot. The pilot had about 11,000 hours of total flight time, with about 2 hours in the accident make and model. Witnesses reported that the airplane was conducting touch and go takeoffs and landings but that the engine did not sound normal. They subsequently saw the airplane maneuver toward a field before it stalled, collided with trees, and impacted the ground. There was evidence of fuel at the accident site, and inspection of the airframe and engine did not reveal any abnormalities. According to the carburetor icing probability chart, the airplane was operating in an environment conducive to light carburetor icing at cruise or descent power; it is unlikely that the loss of engine power was the result of carburetor ice accumulation. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined based on available information.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain control while maneuvering for a forced landing, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA169
- Event ID
- 20150312X15728
- Case number
- CEN15LA169
- 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: 2c9eb4b7989d60db9e7840417887fef13da5923a0f676b8f365619c627f6f20d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:08:47.984Z.