CHI99LA020 · Becker Wag Aero SUPER SPORT SUPER SPOR
Becker Wag Aero SUPER SPORT SUPER SPOR · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From ND06 · Cavalier, ND to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA020
- 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
Becker Wag Aero SUPER SPORT SUPER SPOR
- Aircraft type
- Becker Wag Aero SUPER SPORT
- 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
- N285BB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ND06 · Cavalier, NDTo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 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
- Wing, bracing strut › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported that he saw the airplane about 1,000 to 2,000 feet above ground and 'falling' from the sky. He reported a wing had separated from the airplane. The wreckage was located in a field and the right wing was found about 450 feet to the southwest of the main wreckage. The pilot had built the experimental airplane with his brothers in 1985. The airplane had approximately 1,800 hours total time. A metallurgical examination of the lower right wing strut attachment bracket revealed fatigue fractures of the lower sheet of the attachment bracket. Each side of the lower sheet contained a bend relief slot at the location of maximum bend in the lower sheet. The examination revealed that the fracture through the lower sheet extended across the bracket from one bend relief slot to the other. Aircraft fabric covered over the location of the fracture and it could not be observed during a normal pre-flight. To properly inspect the area where the fracture occurred, the fabric needed to be cut and pulled back from the aircraft frame.
Probable cause
the fatigue failure of the lower wing strut attachment bracket.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA020
- Event ID
- 20001211X11378
- Case number
- CHI99LA020
- 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: a20f8167ffb6191783298b3d6a457dcb374882437a4dce6bc732a32971a9fc78; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:20:13.751Z.