CEN22FA019 · American Champion Aircraft 8KCAB
One Two Kilo Delta American Champion Aircraft 8KCAB · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From John F Kennedy Memorial Airport (ASX) to Flying Cloud Airport (FCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA019
- 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
American Champion Aircraft 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- American Champion 8
- 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
- N843AC
- Operator
- One Two Kilo Delta
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John F Kennedy Memorial Airport (ASX), Ashland, WITo Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Eden Prairie, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1999)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
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 and passenger were conducting a personal flight. The pilot’s sister-in-law received a phone call from the pilot about 5 minutes before the accident, during which the pilot told her to wait outside because he intended to fly over her house. The airplane then overflew her position multiple times at a low altitude before she saw the airplane “doing a loop” shortly before it descended into terrain.
Another witness saw the airplane flying “pretty low” about 200 - 400 ft above the ground. The witness stated that the airplane dove toward the ground while flying to the west before it “went back up going upside down” while flying to the south. The airplane then descended and crashed in a residential yard while flying north.
Based on video footage, the pilot completed several low passes and steep turns while flying near his sister-in-law’s house; there was no video evidence that the pilot attempted an aerobatic loop maneuver. Further review of on-board video footage indicated the airplane’s bank angle exceeded 80° left-wing-down, and the stall warning horn was audible in the seconds before the accident. Another video, captured by the pilot’s sister-in-law on the ground, showed the airplane in a steep nose-down descent in the moments before the accident.
Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot did not maintain adequate airspeed during a steep turn, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and an inadvertent aerodynamic stall at a low altitude. The low altitude at which the aerodynamic stall occurred likely prevented a successful recovery.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no evidence of a preexisting mechanical malfunction or failure that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane.
Although the pilot’s autopsy revealed he had acute myocarditis, likely due to COVID-19, there was no evidence of impairment based on the on-board video footage. Additionally, toxicological testing did not reveal any impairing substances.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the steep turn, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall. Also causal was the pilot’s decision to conduct steep turns without sufficient altitude to safely recover from an inadvertent aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA019
- Event ID
- 20211023104152
- Case number
- CEN22FA019
- 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, cause areas. 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: 6b3932fc274a9773a465cac63108f3270f753d244255decd478efca18d61afc6; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:36:03.496Z.