GAA16CA384 · Boeing A75 UNDESIGNAT
Boeing A75 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From St. James, MO (private airstrip) to St. James, MO (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA384
- 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
Boeing A75 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Boeing A75
- 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
- N4558N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. James, MO (private airstrip)To St. James, MO (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · aerobatics
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that during a local flight in the aerobatic biplane, he performed an aerobatic flight maneuver about 2,000 feet above ground level. He reported that he performed a left wing over, the airplane entered an unintentional spin and he recovered from the spin too low to the ground. The airplane impacted trees and came to rest upright, but sustained substantial damage to both wings, fuselage and empennage.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane during the flight that would have prevented normal flight operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control while performing an aerobatic maneuver resulting in an inadvertent spin and collision with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA384
- Event ID
- 20160721X52728
- Case number
- GAA16CA384
- 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: fa97a15924946764baa6c5ac9388988891a4867ab9af10644cad4592f51f4a7f; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:41:10.760Z.