CEN18LA257 · Piper PA46 350P
CD Air Piper PA46 350P · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (KFAY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA257
- 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
Piper PA46 350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N689KC
- Operator
- CD Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (KFAY), Fayettevile, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2016)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
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
During landing, the airplane bounced, and the pilot applied power to go around. The pilot reported that the engine did not produce full power and the airplane began to slow down. Onboard data indicated that the pilot accelerated the airplane to a maximum speed of 70 kts before he retracted the flaps; the airplane rolled right and impacted the runway, resulting in substantial damage. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would preclude normal operation. The airplane's published stall speed in the landing configuration was 60 knots; and 69 kts with landing gear and flaps retracted. The procedure for a go-around included retracting the wing flaps incrementally after attaining an airspeed of 80 kts. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot's failure to attain the proper airspeed during the go-around, and his improper decision to fully retract the wing flaps before attaining adequate airspeed, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, an aerodynamic stall, and impact with the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during an improper go-around procedure which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA257
- Event ID
- 20180706X52945
- Case number
- CEN18LA257
- 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, cause areas. 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: 33f832dd5bc2eb00319166f6634b0cfaf251e4dfb2a140b60ddd27eab079c459; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:45:53.407Z.