NYC02LA129 · Pank KitFox
Pank KitFox · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Sprakers, NY (no airport) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA129
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Pank KitFox
- Aircraft type
- Pank KITFOX
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sprakers, NY (no airport)To No airport
- 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After recently finishing the airplane, the pilot conducted some taxi test, made some modifications to the airplane, and then flew it for the first time. The pilot completed four right traffic patterns, the airplane was unstable during the flight, and the pilot had trouble landing the airplane. The pilot tightened the engine mounts, and then flew the airplane for a second time. Stability improved on the second flight, and once again, the pilot executed right traffic. On the pilot's forth landing attempt, the airplane bounced four times, engine noise increased, and the airplane entered a "very aggressive climb." Pitch angle then reduced to about 10 to 15 degrees, and the airplane turned left crosswind about 300 feet agl. The airplane continued to climb at a "very slow airspeed, and "entered a left bank. Bank angle increased to 60 degrees, and the airplane entered a left spin before impacting the ground. The wind was from the west at 10 to 15 knots. The pilot never held a pilot rating, and had approximately 200 hours of flight experience in ultralight airplanes.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. A factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in category of aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA129
- Event ID
- 20020722X01177
- Case number
- NYC02LA129
- 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, coordinates. 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: f6173c66175647fc7df47c044e82adddef0805c2703268c5ac3d53845eeb49f8; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:58:06.069Z.