ERA18LA087 · Aero Commander CALLAIR A 9
Aero Commander CALLAIR A 9 · Accident: altitude deviation during initial climb
From Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5) to Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA087
- 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
Aero Commander CALLAIR A 9
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander CALLAIR A 9
- 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
- N8401V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5), Bunn, NCTo Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5), Bunn, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 48 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
- 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
- Altitude deviation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student on board the glider were conducting an aerotow takeoff with the student manipulating the controls. About 300 ft above ground level (agl), the glider encountered a gust, causing it to move out of position behind the tow plane, and the tow rope developed slack. The student corrected, and as the tow rope tightened, the glider continued up and to the left "at an alarming rate" and became "extremely out of position." The instructor assumed control of the glider and attempted to release from the tow plane, noting that more force than usual was required, and the glider release activated during the third attempt. The glider returned to the runway and landed uneventfully. The pilot of the towplane stated that the tow was "very turbulent" and he noted that the glider was out of position. He stated that the airplane's nose was "suddenly jerked about 35° left" and the tail of the airplane began to rise. He attempted to release the glider, but had difficulty reaching the release handle, and the glider released "a split second before" he was able to do so, at an estimated altitude about 75 ft agl. The airplane's left wing contacted trees and the airplane impacted the ground nearly inverted. Examination of the glider tow release hook revealed that, although the force required to activate the release was higher than that specified in the maintenance manual, this condition did not contribute to the accident, and the flight instructor's difficulty actuating the release mechanism was most likely the result of side-loading of the release mechanism due to the glider being out of position.
Probable cause
The glider instructor's delayed remedial action when the glider became out of position during aerotow, which resulted in excessive side-loading of the release hook and a delay in the glider's release from tow, which resulted in the towplane’s descent and impact with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA087
- Event ID
- 20180226X10119
- Case number
- ERA18LA087
- 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: 49ea8b9ac00f0d3b23ce8dc80f76bab418d9fbc33efbf586c3456d271dcd07d0; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:31:19.078Z.