ERA17FA153 · Howard Aircraft DGA 15P
Howard Aircraft DGA 15P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Allegheny County Airport (AGC) to Rostraver Airport (FWQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17FA153
- 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
Howard Aircraft DGA 15P
- Aircraft type
- Howard DGA-15
- 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
- N4476N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Allegheny County Airport (AGC), Pittsburgh, PATo Rostraver Airport (FWQ), Monongahela, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 78 years (built 1939)
- 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 go-around
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane touch down left of the runway centerline in gusting crosswind conditions and then attempt to go-around. As the engine noise increased, the airplane yawed 90° left and banked left, perpendicular to the runway. The airplane's nose pitched up, and the airplane subsequently entered an aerodynamic stall and rolled inverted before impacting a ravine about 400 ft left of the runway. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane was equipped with a 450-hp radial engine. It is likely that, upon application of engine power to initiate the go-around, the pilot failed to adequately compensate for the extreme left-turning tendencies of the high-powered engine, which resulted in a subsequent loss of control and aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control during an attempted go-around in gusting crosswind conditions, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17FA153
- Event ID
- 20170412X70158
- Case number
- ERA17FA153
- 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: 2e1a905adc5b17ab3c0bc5b7724b8d8223c0d5f304c5c256aa234a07a60e5ac0; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:01:07.962Z.