ERA15LA156 · Kolb TWINSTAR MK-II
Kolb TWINSTAR MK-II · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Butler Municipal Airport (6A1) to Thomaston Upson County Airport (OPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA156
- 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
- 0
- 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
Kolb TWINSTAR MK-II
- Aircraft type
- Kolb TWINSTAR
- 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
- N193Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Butler Municipal Airport (6A1), Butler, GATo Thomaston Upson County Airport (OPN), Thomaston, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2007)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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 student pilot was flying at a low altitude over a relative's residence. The airplane circled over the house twice before overflying a wooded area at the neighboring residence and, according to a witness, appeared to "hover" as it flew over the trees. Shortly thereafter, the airplane suddenly pitched nose-down and impacted terrain. Witness observations were consistent with the airplane flying at a very low groundspeed, and likely a very low airspeed. The nose-down impact angle, and absence of ground scars or debris path were consistent with a stall at the time of impact. Because the airplane was operating at low altitude, the airplane's altitude was insufficient to allow the student pilot to recover the airplane from the stall. Although oil was found on the engine case and empennage, no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures were found with the engine or airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot's decision to operate the airplane at a low altitude that did not allow for stall recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA156
- Event ID
- 20150316X02127
- Case number
- ERA15LA156
- 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: 86ea71ceef547632d4133acd3b333275cdedf0dd67fb2c03bb5c77bdf949fbea; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:33:01.168Z.