ERA16LA267 · Temple Benjamin FREEDOM MASTER FM-2
Temple Benjamin FREEDOM MASTER FM-2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Goodspeed Airport (42B) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA267
- 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
Temple Benjamin FREEDOM MASTER FM-2
- Aircraft type
- Temple Benjamin FREEDOM MASTER FM-2
- 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
- N282XT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Goodspeed Airport (42B), East Haddam, CTTo Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2012)
- 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
- 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
According to witnesses, the commercial pilot performed an engine run-up and then departed the airport in the experimental, amateur-built airplane. The airplane climbed to about 400 ft above ground level, entered a steep left bank then a spin, and descended behind trees. Video recorded by one of the witnesses showed the airplane in the spin and also revealed that the engine was operating until it impacted a house. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. According to a friend of the pilot, the pilot did not have much flight time in the accident airplane, and most of the accident airplane's initial test flights were completed by another pilot. There were no entries in the pilot's logbook associated with the accident airplane make and model. Given the lack of mechanical malfunctions and the pilot's lack of experience in the airplane, it is likely that the pilot failed to maintain airplane control during the initial climb.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of airplane control during the initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA267
- Event ID
- 20160724X22649
- Case number
- ERA16LA267
- 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: 26b9e6a8df59870c31e01f1d492b7eb867dd49e85f3c03836820397b100fb6a1; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:41:35.805Z.