ERA15LA184 · Cessna Aircraft Co 162
SMC Aviation Cessna Aircraft Co 162 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Shelter Island, NY (private airstrip) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA184
- 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
Cessna Aircraft Co 162
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 162
- 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
- N30283
- Operator
- SMC Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shelter Island, NY (private airstrip)To Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2011)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 pilot reported that he conducted a preflight inspection, including a flight control check, and taxied the airplane to the runway for takeoff. After he took off from the turf runway, the light-sport airplane immediately began banking right, and the right aileron did not respond to control inputs. The airplane subsequently impacted trees and terrain before coming to rest near the runway. Witness reports and photographs indicated that the airplane became airborne about midfield of the 1,400-ft-long runway and corroborated that the airplane then banked right before impacting terrain.
Examination of the airframe revealed no evidence of preaccident malfunction or failure, and flight control continuity was confirmed. During an engine test run, the engine started and operated normally. Although the right aileron control cable located behind the cockpit instrument panel was found separated, the cable exhibited tensile overload signatures consistent with impact damage. Further, given that the pilot reported that he checked the flight controls before departure, the flight control cable likely fractured due to tensile overload during impact. Based on the evidence indicating that the airplane immediately banked right after takeoff and then descended to impact, it is likely that the pilot did not maintain adequate airspeed and exceeded the airplane's critical angle-of-attack, which resulted in in an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain adequate airspeed after takeoff and his exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle-of-attack during the initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at too low an altitude to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA184
- Event ID
- 20150414X80139
- Case number
- ERA15LA184
- 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: 7d824108a2849a5e8ae8c63bd36b67604f1f4ce3c6fcac9a685d013c82f402c0; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:13:43.349Z.