CEN19FA307 · Cessna 140 Undesignat
Cessna 140 Undesignat · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Lakeview, SD (no airport) to Lakeview, SD (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA307
- 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
- 2 · 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 140 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N73000
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeview, SD (no airport)To Lakeview, SD (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1946)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- 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 student pilot was conducting a low-level aerial observation flight with his son to determine the level of water in towers on farms nearby. The time of the student pilot’s departure from his private airstrip and the time of the accident could not be determined. The amount of fuel in the airplane at takeoff was undetermined. After contact from concerned family members, law enforcement located the wreckage the next day about 825 ft from the approach end of the pilot's airstrip.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Airplane wreckage and impact signatures were consistent with the airplane being configured for landing. Propeller signatures indicated little or no rotation at the time of impact. The impact damage was consistent with a loss of control in flight, followed by the exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall. The reason for the loss of control in flight could not be determined.
The student pilot was taught to fly by his grandfather. It is possible the student pilot was teaching his son to fly; however, it was undetermined if that was occurring during the accident flight. The pilot held a student pilot certificate and therefore was prohibited by regulation from carrying a passenger. Additionally, the student pilot's endorsement for flight operations was expired, and he did not hold an endorsement for the accident airplane make and model.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane, which resulted in the exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle-of-attack, an aerodynamic stall, and subsequent impact with terrain, and the student pilot’s non-compliance and lack of experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA307
- Event ID
- 20190909X13121
- Case number
- CEN19FA307
- 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: e29404465e2c66e98ef4e6e5776bd76e4badf1725bb72956001f53d87a477c7b; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:05:07.491Z.