CEN18FA045 · Piper TITAN TORNADO II D
Piper TITAN TORNADO II D · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Portage County Regional Airport (POV) to Portage County Regional Airport (POV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA045
- 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
Piper TITAN TORNADO II D
- Aircraft type
- Piper TITAN TORNADO
- 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
- N2200T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portage County Regional Airport (POV), Ravenna, OHTo Portage County Regional Airport (POV), Ravenna, OH
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2017)
- 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 final
- 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
The sport pilot of the experimental, amateur-built airplane was returning to the airport after a 30-minute flight. A witness saw the airplane on final approach to the runway about 500 ft above ground level when he heard a total loss of engine power. The airplane banked left and right and entered a nose-down descent consistent with an aerodynamic stall condition. The airplane impacted terrain short of the runway.
Although the witness, an acquaintance of the accident pilot, estimated that the pilot had accrued about 10 hours of flight time in the airplane since purchasing it about 1 year prior, the pilot's logbook was not located during the investigation, and his experience level in the accident airplane could not be determined. Additionally, it could not be determined if the pilot had obtained transition training in the accident airplane, which was classified as a low-inertia/high-drag airplane. Low-inertia/high-drag airplanes rapidly lose energy (airspeed and/or altitude) when there is a loss or reduction of power, and are particularly susceptible to unintentional aerodynamic stalls due to their low cruise speed to stall speed margin and their tendency to experience significant airspeed decay with increased load factor (such as during a turn).
Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation; therefore, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined. It is likely that the pilot failed to attain a proper airspeed following the loss of engine power, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, an aerodynamic stall, and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed following a loss of engine power during final approach for landing, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA045
- Event ID
- 20171204X10532
- Case number
- CEN18FA045
- 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: a1767248a3fa8cccbf8820a50d3bbc384194b260d0901bc27855b1beb08e083d; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:26:08.378Z.