GAA16CA166 · Piper J5A
Piper J5A · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK) to Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA166
- 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
Piper J5A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N41239
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK), Pahokee, FLTo Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK), Pahokee, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 75 years (built 1941)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 pilot reported that the purpose of the flight was to maneuver at low altitude and chase birds away from designated fields. The pilot further reported that he had previously completed about 8 to 10 turns over the target field and during a steep "reversal turn" to the left the airplane impacted terrain. The pilot had no other recollection of the accident.
According to a private pilot witness located about 700 feet from the accident airplane, he observed the accident airplane enter a "steep turn" to the left about 50 to 75 feet above the ground. The witness further reported that the airplane "stalled and spun into the ground", and that the engine noise became louder seconds before impact.
The fuselage and both wings were substantially damaged.
The Federal Aviation Administration Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge in part states: an airplane will "stall at a higher indicated airspeed when excessive maneuvering loads are imposed by steep turns, pull-ups, or other abrupt changes in its flight path." Stalls entered from such flight situations are called "accelerated maneuver stalls," a term, which has no reference to the airspeeds involved. Stalls which result from abrupt maneuvers tend to be more rapid, or severe, than the unaccelerated stalls, and because they occur at higher-than-normal airspeeds, and/or may occur at lower than anticipated pitch attitudes, they may be unexpected by an inexperienced pilot. Failure to take immediate steps toward recovery when an accelerated stall occurs may result in a complete loss of flight control, notably, power-on spins.
The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the critical angle of attack while maneuvering at low altitude, which resulted in an accelerated aerodynamic stall, spin, and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA166
- Event ID
- 20160329X75123
- Case number
- GAA16CA166
- 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: 7add427d4b8eeaaad60b81d8512fbad84a9a867ddb8e97e7e1e1053e7040e7df; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:15:19.345Z.