CEN22FA211 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From F97 · Seagraves, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA211
- 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
- 1 · 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
Piper PA-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N78466
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F97 · Seagraves, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 75 years (built 1947)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had been observed flying in the area over a period of several weeks at a low altitude and while performing “ag-type maneuvers” over the fields, as he aspired to become an agricultural pilot. There were no witnesses to the accident; the airplane wreckage was discovered in a field by a local farmer. Examination revealed that the airplane impacted terrain in a nose- and right-wing-low attitude, and the orientation of the wreckage was consistent with an aerodynamic stall/spin. There was no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or anomalies of the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering, possibly at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin, a loss of control, and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA211
- Event ID
- 20220524105125
- Case number
- CEN22FA211
- 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: b711be78dc445621950711e50064626c7566c6171d872442fa5880dfd1838630; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:44:44.905Z.