GAA18CA549 · Aviat A1 B
Summit Aviation Aviat A1 B · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT) to Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA549
- 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
Aviat A1 B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A1
- 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
- N868X
- Operator
- Summit Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT), Bentonville, ARTo Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT), Bentonville, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2006)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during landing, the tailwheel-equipped airplane bounced. The airplane then bounced again twice and veered left of the centerline, and he applied "stick back" to pin the tail down. He then applied full throttle to go around but did not relieve the back pressure on the stick. Subsequently, the airplane pitched up in a "very high" angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and spin and subsequent impact with the ground.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during an attempted go-around after the airplane bounced, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA549
- Event ID
- 20180913X32942
- Case number
- GAA18CA549
- 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, coordinates. 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: 627c771e334c20060f984e7c553fa28a57466eeb2a7c3b92f60327106767e4a0; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:14:35.576Z.