CEN20CA100 · Commander 114 B
Commander 114 B · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Branch County Memorial Airport (OEB) to Branch County Memorial Airport (OEB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA100
- 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
- 0
- 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
Commander 114 B
- Aircraft type
- Commander 114
- 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
- N374JW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Branch County Memorial Airport (OEB), Coldwater, MITo Branch County Memorial Airport (OEB), Coldwater, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1993)
- 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 › Action/decision
- 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, during a flight review for the pilot, after takeoff and when the airplane was between about 300 and 400 ft above ground level, he reduced the throttle to idle to simulate an engine failure. The instructor expected the pilot to make a gradual right turn to land midfield on the intersecting runway. However, the pilot did not respond as expected, so the instructor assumed control, made a right turn, and lowered the airplane's nose. The pilot reported that, about the same time, he thought the airplane was too low, so he advanced the throttle full forward, but they could not arrest the descent. They felt the airplane shudder, and it experienced an aerodynamic stall and impacted terrain. A postimpact fire ensued under the engine cowling, which the passenger extinguished using the onboard fire extinguisher. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. Examination of the propeller revealed curling and chordwise scratches on the blades, and the engine monitor indicated that the engine was turning at 2,625 rpm after the throttle was pushed forward, both of which are consistent with the engine producing high power at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate communication with the pilot under review about his intention to simulate a single-engine failure and his subsequent exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack when the pilot did not respond as expected, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA100
- Event ID
- 20200224X11916
- Case number
- CEN20CA100
- 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: 96265a994df3dfd1ceac64e74bd5504e25b70a25b9b976063065053655bbcf98; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:09:45.251Z.