CEN19LA225 · Cessna T188 C
AAA Spraying Solutions Cessna T188 C · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Knox, IN (private airstrip) to Knox, IN (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA225
- 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
Cessna T188 C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N2863J
- Operator
- AAA Spraying Solutions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knox, IN (private airstrip)To Knox, IN (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
The pilot was practicing agricultural application passes along the operator's airstrip. A witness reported that the pilot's initial passes were completed without incident, although the pilot "seemed to be slightly aggressive in the turns." After landing, the pilot mentioned turning at an airspeed of 60 mph, and the witness informed him to never fly below 80 mph. The pilot took off and completed three more practice passes. After the pilot's final pass, he executed a "very steep field exit" and held the airplane in a nose-up attitude longer than required to clear the obstacles. He entered a left 270° turn and, after rolling wings-level, the airplane entered an "extremely slow" climb before abruptly rolling into a steep left bank that continued until impact. The pilot reported that the did not recall any of the events leading to the accident. A postaccident examination revealed damage to the forward fuselage, both wings and the empennage. The examination did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a preimpact failure or malfunction. It is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at an altitude that precluded recovery.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA225
- Event ID
- 20190715X23000
- Case number
- CEN19LA225
- 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: fe3d2d5e2cc05d8290107343303065b5cefa277e104daa16e0c6734d3fc4daaa; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:25:06.505Z.