FTW96LA112 · Masnic SKY HOPPER II SKY HOPPER
Masnic SKY HOPPER II SKY HOPPER · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Chloride Airport (NM51) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA112
- 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
- 0 · 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
Masnic SKY HOPPER II SKY HOPPER
- Aircraft type
- Masnic SKY HOPPER
- 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
- N2795
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chloride Airport (NM51)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · roll/run
- First occurrenceThe 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 on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, not possible
- Pilot in command › Crosswind component, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff roll to the east, the experimental homebuilt airplane veered to the left of the runway. The pilot applied right rudder and brake; however, the airplane did not respond. The pilot reported the winds varied from 6 to 8 mph from the northeast through the northwest with 'occasional northerly gust' to 15 mph. A rudder modification by the pilot increased the surface area by 170 square inches. Following the modification, the pilot had flown the airplane 38.06 hours, and he considered the 'rudder authority as fairly good.' The pilot recalled that several weeks before the current accident he had applied full right rudder during a takeoff with a 'varying crosswind.' He reported that 'he was probably operating the [modified] rudder at the limit of its design capacity in [the] gust.'
Probable cause
the pilot exceeding the airplane's crosswind component which led to his inability to compensate for the crosswind conditions. A factor was the gusty winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA112
- Event ID
- 20001208X05245
- Case number
- FTW96LA112
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 0edbd84d10eb859c087b0345616e3ac338d026b02f6fd70c834884bc5fba1005; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:50:37.394Z.