GAA19CA527 · Diamond DA20 C1
Cti Aircraft Leasing Diamond DA20 C1 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Covington Municipal Airport (M04) to Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA527
- 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
Diamond DA20 C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA20
- 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
- N98BZ
- Operator
- Cti Aircraft Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Covington Municipal Airport (M04), Covington, TNTo Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA), Millington, TN
- 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
- Landing
- 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 flight instructor reported that he instructed his student to perform a soft-field takeoff. During the takeoff roll, the instructor had his hands on the flight controls while the student pilot released the yoke back pressure and the airplane began to climb, but the airplane's nose was too high. The flight instructor pushed forward on the control stick to correct the nose high attitude, "and the plane started to pull to the right." The flight instructor does not know whether the stall warning horn sounded, as the airplane flew over the right edge of the runway, but he does recall being on the flight controls when the airplane descended and impacted the grass safety area on the right side of the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage composite structure.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper pitch attitude during the takeoff climb, and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and ground impact.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA527
- Event ID
- 20190904X60022
- Case number
- GAA19CA527
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 3e2187f0f95e866c2af6640e5531b52c05211f82cdbddb703dba10407b6da693; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:59:10.770Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. M04 is Covington Municipal Airport at Covington, TN; 'Convington' is a misspelling.