CEN22FA214 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA214
- 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
- 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
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N4978B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was performing a solo flight and practicing takeoffs and landings. A witness reported, and ADS-B data confirmed, that the student pilot performed a touch-and-go. According to the witness, the airplane touched down long and then took off again. When the airplane lifted off the ground, the flaps remained down. The airplane climbed just above tree height in a nose-high attitude. Shortly thereafter, the left wing dropped, and the airplane descended “straight down.” During the climb, the student pilot reported to air traffic control (ATC) that he had an engine failure. Subsequently, he reported that he did not have his flaps up. A performance study was conducted to estimate the drag characteristics of the airplane and the engine power developed during the initial takeoff, subsequent landing, and accident takeoff. Before telling ATC that the flaps were not up, the pilot reported an engine failure; however, according to the study, the energy state of the airplane and the computed power required during the accident climb at flaps 30° are inconsistent with a loss of power. Instead, performance calculations indicate that the engine was producing power consistent with the power levels achieved during the previous (initial) takeoff and climb, which was performed with the flaps up. The airplane’s lift coefficient, computed using ADS-B data and wind speeds consistent with the reported weather, indicate that the flaps 30° maximum lift coefficient was reached about 13 seconds after the pilot reported an engine failure, and nearly coincident with the time that the pilot reported that the flaps were not up. The increase of the airplane’s lift coefficient to the maximum lift, and the rapid drop in pitch angle, angle of attack, and flight path angle that followed, are consistent with an aerodynamic stall and subsequent loss of control. Physical examination of the airframe, engine, and propeller did not reveal any preimpact failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in a stall from which the student pilot could not recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA214
- Event ID
- 20220526105138
- Case number
- CEN22FA214
- 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: 48bb706637972650590b07aa4df753b592ce92a2a0fa576e3c297c2e19ac7382; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:44:53.658Z.