CEN22LA127 · Quad City CHALLENGER II
Quad City CHALLENGER II · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA127
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Quad City CHALLENGER II
- Aircraft type
- Quad City CHALLENGER
- 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
- N438RN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2012)
- 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
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot reported that during the initial climb after taking off, he lowered flaps and the airplane pitched up into a nose-high attitude. The pilot reduced power and attempted to land back on the runway, but the airplane exceeded its critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control at an altitude too low to allow for recovery. The airplane impacted trees and terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right aileron, the left wing strut, and the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that he had recently purchased and reassembled the airplane and had performed multiple takeoffs and landings before the accident takeoff. The pilot reported that the nose-high pitch after the flap application was “higher than expected.”
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during the initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control at too low of an altitude to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA127
- Event ID
- 20220222104673
- Case number
- CEN22LA127
- 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: 3920f2606f4d2cece01e8396bdd6da55b2737705dd0caa6750115aaf7be6926a; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:58:47.069Z.