NTSB CAROL · Event
Event GAA16CA394
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during takeoff on an uneven runway surface, which resulted in it becoming airborne prematurely, an aerodynamic stall, and impact with terrain.
Factual narrative
The pilot reported that during the takeoff roll from a private, dirt airstrip the airplane encountered a bump and became airborne prematurely. The pilot further reported that he attempted to reduce the angle of attack, but the left wing aerodynamically stalled and the airplane impacted terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, left wing, right wing and aileron, and right vertical stabilizer. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that during the takeoff roll from a private, dirt airstrip the airplane encountered a bump and became airborne prematurely. The pilot further reported that he attempted to reduce the angle of attack, but the left wing aerodynamically stalled and the airplane impacted terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, left wing, right wing and aileron, and right vertical stabilizer. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- C Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
- C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Angle of attack-Capability exceeded - C
- C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-(general)-Not attained/maintained - C
- C Environmental issues-Physical environment-Runway/land/takeoff/taxi surface-(general)-Effect on operation - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2016_GAA16CA394.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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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.
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Large-eddy simulations of the NACA23012 airfoil with laser-scanned ice shapes
In this study, five ice shapes generated at NASA Glenn's Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) are simulated at multiple angles of attack (Broeren et al., J. of Aircraft, 2018).
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Novel Online-Offline MA2C-DDPG for Efficient Spectrum Allocation and Trajectory Optimization in Dynamic Spectrum Sharing UAV Networks
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication is of crucial importance for diverse practical applications. However, it is susceptible to the severe spectrum scarcity problem and interference since it op…
- Semantic Scholar 2019 · Article (International Conference on Interaction Sciences)
Using lda2vec Topic Modeling to Identify Latent Topics in Aviation Safety Reports
The study of aviation safety report in the aviation industry usually relies on manually labeled data sets, and then classifies and models related problems, which have become insufficient in the face o…
- NASA NTRS 2026 · Conference Paper
Computational Analysis of Steady State Aerodynamics of Transonic Truss-Braced Wing Configuration in Deep Stall
This study presents a computational investigation of steady state aerodynamics of the Subsonic Ultra-Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) configuration over a wide range …
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint
Transonic buffet and incompressible low-frequency oscillations at high Reynolds numbers
Coherent, self-sustained oscillations of the flow over aircraft wings can lead to unsteady loads that detrimentally affect aircraft safety and stability, thus limiting the flight envelope.
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Automating Bird Diverter Installation through Multi-Aerial Robots and Signal Temporal Logic Specifications
This paper tackles the task assignment and trajectory generation problem for bird diverter installation using a fleet of multi-rotors.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗