CEN19LA242 · Icon A5
Icon Aircraft Icon A5 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Lake, MI to Lake, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA242
- 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
Icon A5
- Aircraft type
- Icon A5
- 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
- N663BA
- Operator
- Icon Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake, MITo Lake, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 3 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a sales demonstration flight with a pilot-rated passenger on board. He reported that, when he started the takeoff run from a lake, three small wakes helped propel the airplane into the air. He stated that the airplane took off on the first attempt, the takeoff was normal, and "there was nothing wrong with the [air]plane at all." He added that, after initiating a 10° right turn to stay over the lake, it felt like the airplane "hit a wall." The airplane then descended rapidly, clipped a tree, and impacted water, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings.
The pilot-rated passenger said that it took four takeoff attempts to get airborne and that the airplane felt very sluggish and acted as if it did not want to come off the water.
Postaccident weight and balance calculations revealed that the airplane was about 57 lbs over its maximum gross weight and outside of the weight and center of gravity limits contained in the pilot's operating handbook. Data retrieved from the airplane's onboard digital-to-analogue converter were consistent with three takeoff attempts, with the airplane becoming airborne on the third attempt. A review of video of the accident flight from witnesses showed the airplane in a nose-high attitude with the flaps extended as it approached trees during the initial climb. As the airplane reached about the midpoint of a stand of trees, the angle of attack appeared to increase and the nose dropped. The right wing then lowered and impacted one of the trees.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to operate the airplane in exceedance of the airplane manufacturer’s operating limitations, which led to an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper decision to continue attempting the takeoff after two failed attempts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA242
- Event ID
- 20190728X20826
- Case number
- CEN19LA242
- 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: 57b9b05fd3ddcf5cd018d0b96cdf15f68ab530770260677a168d85e8501b3029; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:35:12.212Z.