ERA18FA232 · Piper PA22 150
Piper PA22 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From John H Boylan State (Island Pond) Airport (5B1) to John H Boylan State (Island Pond) Airport (5B1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18FA232
- 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 PA22 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA22
- 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
- N6936B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John H Boylan State (Island Pond) Airport (5B1), Island Pond, VTTo John H Boylan State (Island Pond) Airport (5B1), Island Pond, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1956)
- 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 base
- 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
- 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
The private pilot was landing his airplane at his home airport at the conclusion of a local flight. The airplane was last seen flying normally on the left downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern, and the wreckage was subsequently discovered in a location consistent with a turn from the downwind to base leg of the traffic pattern. The airplane and engine sustained extensive impact damage and postimpact fire damage; however, examination revealed no discrepancies that would have precluded normal operation. A friend of the pilot, who flew with him often, said that the pilot tended to turn from the downwind leg onto the base leg of the traffic pattern "quite steep" (about 40° bank) and slow (62-63 knots). The friend said that he shared his concerns about stalling with the pilot, but the pilot did not share the same concern. The airplane was not equipped with a stall warning horn or angle of attack indicator.
Postmortem toxicology testing revealed the presence of several medications, including diphenhydramine, a sedating antihistamine; however, given the low levels identified, there was no evidence that the pilot was impaired by his use of diphenhydramine or that it contributed to the accident.
Given the amount of fuel onboard and the duration of the flight, it is unlikely that the airplane ran out of fuel. Although there were no witnesses to the accident, given the location of the accident site, lack of preimpact mechanical anomalies, and the pilot's reported habit of conducting traffic pattern turns at a slow speed in a steep bank, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering for landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering for landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18FA232
- Event ID
- 20180825X72100
- Case number
- ERA18FA232
- 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: 591896c580d41e9abea63af578a2607501b48f11dc808bf5194fe7a413cdb6d1; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:46:53.031Z.