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Atlas / NTSB / CHI89DET01

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event CHI89DET01

1988-10-08 COLDWATER, Michigan, United States Airport · D96 Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N131JT

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

AERO COMMANDER 500-B

Year of manufacture

1964 · 24 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING IO-540 SER (300 hp)

Seats / Engines

7 seats · 2 engines

Last airworthiness date

19970918

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A07FC2

Registrant of record

CENTRAL AIRLINES INC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

A STALL WITH ENTRY INTO THE INCIPIENT STAGE OF A SPIN WITH INSUFFICIENT ALTITUDE FOR RECOVERY.

Factual narrative

THE ACFT WAS IN LOCAL TRAFFIC PATTERN AT APPROXIMATELY 300 FEET AGL. WITNESSES DESCRIBED THE ACFT ATTITUDE AS NOSE HIGH, AND THE AIRSPEED AS SLOW AS THE PILOT WAS TURNING DOWNWIND. WITNESSES DESCRIBED THE ENGINE NOISE AS LOUD. THE ACFT ROLLED INVERTED AND STRUCK THE GROUND IN AN APRX 60 DEGS NOSE LOW ATTITUDE. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1988_CHI89DET01.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗