CEN17FA108 · Macleod HOMEBUILT
Macleod HOMEBUILT · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Springfield, OH to Springfield, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17FA108
- 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
- 1 · 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
Macleod HOMEBUILT
- Aircraft type
- Macleod HOMEBUILT
- 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
- N62888
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springfield, OHTo Springfield, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed the grass airstrip on a personal local flight in the single-seat experimental, amateur-built airplane. Two witnesses saw the airplane flying low about treetop height and then saw its nose pitch up followed by the airplane descending to ground impact. Another witness heard a loud engine, looked up, and saw the airplane in a nose dive; he heard the engine until just before the airplane impacted the ground. The witness observations were consistent with the pilot failing to maintain control of the airplane, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall. Because the airplane was flying low, there was not enough altitude for the pilot to recover the airplane from the stall.
Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The propeller blades showed no rotational damage, consistent with the engine not producing power at impact. However, a witness reported hearing the engine during descent until just prior to impact. The investigation could not determine if the engine lost power during descent or if the pilot reduced power prior to impact.
The shoulder harness assembly was found behind the forward bulkhead, unable to be accessed by the pilot. Additionally, the shoulder harness was found wrapped around the rudder cable. However, the wear on the shoulder harness was consistent with having been wrapped around the rudder cables for a while indicating it did not likely affect the operation of the rudder.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control at an altitude too low for a safe recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17FA108
- Event ID
- 20170222X25314
- Case number
- CEN17FA108
- 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: 4649d0fd1fd6452b047e4f4ebddf283aecdcb0ecac2ff2166bf1e8a3ab8e6f45; retrieved 2026-09-15T05:58:56.692Z.