GAA16CA180 · Lamb-Robin BOWERS FLY BABY 1A
Lamb-Robin BOWERS FLY BABY 1A · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Guthrie-Edmond Regional Airport (GOK) to Guthrie-Edmond Regional Airport (GOK)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA180
- 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
Lamb-Robin BOWERS FLY BABY 1A
- Aircraft type
- Lamb Robin BOWERS FLY BABY
- 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
- N359RJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Guthrie-Edmond Regional Airport (GOK), Guthrie, OKTo Guthrie-Edmond Regional Airport (GOK), Guthrie, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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 during the initial climb, the airplane aerodynamically stalled. He reported that he was unable to recover the airplane due to the low altitude and the airplane impacted a field off the departure end of the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, right wing, and right elevator.
The pilot verified that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
As a safety recommendation, the pilot reported that using full power on takeoff would have prevented the accident.
The Federal Aviation Administration has published the Airplane Flying Handbook FAA-H-8083-3A (2004). This handbook discusses stalls and states in part:
The key to stall awareness is the pilot's ability to visualize the wing's angle of attack in any particular circumstance, and thereby be able to estimate his/her margin of safety above stall. This is a learned skill that must be acquired early in flight training and carried through the pilot's entire flying career. The pilot must understand and appreciate factors such as airspeed, pitch attitude, load factor, relative wind, power setting, and aircraft configuration in order to develop a reasonably accurate mental picture of the wing's angle of attack at any particular time. It is essential to flight safety that a pilot takes into consideration this visualization of the wing's angle of attack prior to entering any flight maneuver.
Stall accidents usually result from an inadvertent stall at a low altitude in which a recovery was not accomplished prior to contact with the surface.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during the initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and a collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA180
- Event ID
- 20160411X23137
- Case number
- GAA16CA180
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-04-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a4808290d955d7e40d993c5cd9e631c2a6bb3ff030f7245210b91bfe0357bd49; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:16:51.655Z.