CEN16LA283 · Bristell E-LSA
Sport Flying USA Bristell E-LSA · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Watertown Municipal Airport (RYV) to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA283
- 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
Bristell E-LSA
- Aircraft type
- Bristell E-LSA
- 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
- N167BL
- Operator
- Sport Flying USA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Watertown Municipal Airport (RYV), Watertown, WITo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 accident airplane was the trailing airplane in a flight of two landing on runway 36L at Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture when the accident occurred. The pilot reported that, while on final approach, he heard an air traffic control transmission telling a canard airplane to land on runway 36R. Mistaking the transmission for 36L, the pilot stated that he began to look for the canard airplane, which diverted his attention from the lead airplane and resulted in a loss of separation. As he approached the lead airplane's right wing, he reduced the engine power and pitched up to slow his airplane. He stated his airplane banked "hard to the right;" he corrected by banking to the left, which, combined with the airplane's nose-high pitch attitude, resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Although the pilot stated that he was directly behind and below the lead airplane, and encountered the airplane's wake turbulence and prop wash, a GoPro camera mounted on the left wing of the accident airplane showed that the airplane remained behind and above the lead airplane; therefore, it is unlikely that the accident airplane encountered wake turbulence. The GoPro footage was consistent with the accident airplane slowing then subsequently experiencing an aerodynamic stall. It is likely that the pilot slowed the airplane excessively as he attempted to maintain separation and exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack on short final approach, which resulted in an inadvertent aerodynamic stall and subsequent loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s distraction with other traffic in the area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA283
- Event ID
- 20160724X14531
- Case number
- CEN16LA283
- 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: e1e8e3fbfbd941d19578945e73102791efa802412d1c16a6c2124b358eb088f0; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:41:32.624Z.