ERA16LA286 · Cessna 177 B
Cessna 177 B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Sidney Municipal Airport (N23) to Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA286
- 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
Cessna 177 B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N30923
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sidney Municipal Airport (N23), Sidney, NYTo Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), Shirley, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1970)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal sightseeing flight with three passengers to view a local landmark. The pilot completed two flyovers uneventfully. The passengers then asked him to fly over a third time at a slower speed. The pilot fully extended the flaps in preparation for the next flyover. During the flyover, the pilot noted that the airplane was slow and had descended to an altitude near the tops of the trees. He applied full engine power and fully retracted the flaps. The airplane nosed down and impacted trees and terrain. The pilot and passengers subsequently egressed the airplane before it was consumed by a postimpact fire.
Extensive thermal damage precluded a detailed examination of the airframe or engine for mechanical malfunctions; however, witness and passenger statements and initial statements provided by the pilot did not indicate any preimpact mechanical anomalies. It is likely that, while performing the flyover at the passengers' request, the pilot became distracted, allowing the airplane to descend and its airspeed to decay. Once the pilot recognized the situation, his response of adding engine power then immediately and fully retracting the flaps while attempting to gain altitude resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper recovery from a slow flight configuration at low altitude, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to operate at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA286
- Event ID
- 20160808X03845
- Case number
- ERA16LA286
- 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: 8bd65935b799a19aa44fcb7f4f1d8ad844985a8d9c4cf56a00903c5a6f3b1d3e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:48:52.100Z.