ERA15LA269 · Cessna Aircraft Co 162
Cessna Aircraft Co 162 · Accident during initial climb
From Chautauqua County-Dunkirk Airport (DKK) to Chautauqua County-Dunkirk Airport (DKK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA269
- 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
- N6047W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chautauqua County-Dunkirk Airport (DKK), Dunkirk, NYTo Chautauqua County-Dunkirk Airport (DKK), Dunkirk, 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the light sport airplane had completed two touch-and-go takeoffs and landings in the airport traffic pattern. During the third takeoff, the right door opened at an altitude about 400 ft above ground level. Seated in the left seat, the pilot attempted to reach across the cockpit and close the door, but could not reach the handle. He stated that the airplane "did not want to fly," and "began to sink" before it impacted trees. A witness stated that the airplane was in an "aggressive" nose-up attitude just before impact.
Postaccident examination of the airplane, including the right door latch, revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot's operating handbook for the airplane stated that, in the event of a door opening in flight, the pilot should not attempt to close the door and should land normally as soon as practical. It is likely that the pilot became distracted by the open door during flight, and, in his attempt to close the door at low altitude, the airplane became too slow, exceeded its critical angle of attack, and experienced an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while attempting to close an open cabin door, 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 ERA15LA269
- Event ID
- 20150716X35209
- Case number
- ERA15LA269
- 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: 09f5c716b7625b96256ad05290b7c1fb66f6400a0b3c7b8268be00094e19bac3; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:32:22.469Z.