CEN17LA037 · Johnson Kenneth R STOL CH 801
Johnson Kenneth R STOL CH 801 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Northport Airport (38WI) to Northport Airport (38WI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA037
- 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
Johnson Kenneth R STOL CH 801
- Aircraft type
- Johnson Kenneth STOL CH 801
- 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
- N801KJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northport Airport (38WI), Royalton, WITo Northport Airport (38WI), Royalton, 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 downwind
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the personal flight was to practice stalls in the homebuilt, experimental airplane. The private pilot reported that he practiced several stall maneuvers and that the airplane handled well. After executing a touch-and-go landing, the pilot took off and established the airplane on downwind, about 1,000 ft above ground level, to set up for a full flaps landing. He lowered the flaps and set the engine power to idle. The pilot then discovered that the control stick would move but that he had no control of the airplane. The airplane impacted the ground and was totally consumed by postimpact fire. The pilot did not remember the crash. He had flown the airplane the day before the accident and did not report any mechanical anomalies. The pilot indicated that he did not believe that the airplane stalled. Due to the extent of the postimpact fire damage, it was not possible to determine any preimpact malfunctions or failures of the engine, flight controls, or flight control surfaces. Thus, the reason for the loss of control could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of control during approach for reasons that could not be determined due to postimpact fire damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA037
- Event ID
- 20161107X55147
- Case number
- CEN17LA037
- 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: 0b5d7551e1878b9180b3332f0b78a5034c3a4f1e376862ed401c5994671e02b4; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:48:53.426Z.