LAX99LA288 · Wirth AVID FLYER
Wirth AVID FLYER · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Sonoma Valley Airport (0Q3) to Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA288
- 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
Wirth AVID FLYER
- Aircraft type
- Wirth AVID FLYER
- 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
- N625F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sonoma Valley Airport (0Q3), CATo Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69), Petaluma, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Weather condition › Downdraft
- Weather condition › Windshear
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, in his experimental 65 hp, 1,200-pound gross weight airplane, took off under calm wind conditions and gained 50 to 75 feet. Then, a wind shear was encountered which yawed the airplane 15 degrees, and the airplane appeared to be pushed backwards. The pilot lost control, and the airplane descended until impacting a ditch about 200 feet from the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with wind shear and a downdraft which precipitated his loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA288
- Event ID
- 20001212X19571
- Case number
- LAX99LA288
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-08-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b64042cfc025ec0c0450ea924443406332cd828ec0df3b1cf072720fece3929b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:24:34.401Z.