CEN15FA255 · Cub Crafters CC18-180
Cub Crafters CC18-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN) to Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA255
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Government
- 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
Cub Crafters CC18-180
- Aircraft type
- Cub Crafters CC18
- 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
- N162WR
- Operator
- Usda-Aphis-Ws
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN), Raton, NMTo Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN), Raton, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane, which was being operated as a public aircraft, departed with the pilot and a gunner on board for the local flight. The purpose of the flight was to locate and kill coyotes in a geographical area with a history of livestock damage. According to the ground-based spotter, the pilot established radio contact with him after the airplane passed over the mesa that bordered the western edge of the target area. The pilot transmitted that he had observed a coyote behind the spotter's position and that they were going to perform a low-altitude pass for the gunner to kill the coyote. The spotter turned around and located the coyote using his binoculars. He reported that he heard 2 to 3 shotgun blasts as the airplane passed through his field of view on a northeast heading. He remained focused on the coyote as the airplane exited his field of view, and, shortly thereafter, he heard it impact the ground.
A review of recovered GPS data indicated that the airplane descended to about 41 ft above the ground and then entered a climbing left turn. The airplane's calculated groundspeed decreased from 77 mph to 55 mph during the climbing left turn. According to the airplane flight manual, the wings-level aerodynamic stall speed was 52 mph with the flaps retracted; however, the stall speed increased to 56 mph when the airplane was in a coordinated 30° banked turn and 74 mph when the airplane was in a coordinated 60° banked turn. A postaccident examination established that the airplane had crashed in a nose-low, near-vertical attitude. Based on the GPS data and the near-vertical impact angle, the pilot likely did not maintain adequate airspeed during the climbing left turn, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall at a low altitude. The postaccident wreckage examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane during the flight.
Although postaccident toxicological testing of the pilot identified three over-the-counter sedating antihistamines, the lack of available blood for testing prevented a determination as to whether they affected the pilot's psychomotor or cognitive functioning during the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering at a low altitude, 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 CEN15FA255
- Event ID
- 20150605X24005
- Case number
- CEN15FA255
- 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: a650dbb07bb391d8d9dc056baeeab6135120459d084a7fc97254231b1bec7e5a; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:28:44.409Z.