CHI03LA013 · Wondrasek Rans S-10 Sakota
Wondrasek Rans S-10 Sakota · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Missouri Valley Airport (90IA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA013
- 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
Wondrasek Rans S-10 Sakota
- Aircraft type
- Wondrasek RANS S-10 SAKOTA
- 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
- N228DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Missouri Valley Airport (90IA), Missouri Valley, IATo 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
- Landing · aborted
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane, piloted by a student pilot, was destroyed on impact with terrain following a loss of control while attempting an aborted landing. A witness stated that he saw the airplane approaching to land but did not observe the landing. He stated that he saw the airplane climb out at a very steep angle. He said the airplane appeared to stall when it was at an altitude of about 300 feet above the ground. He said that, when the airplane stalled, the right wing dropped and the airplane entered a vertical dive. The airplane subsequently impacted the ground. Another witness said that he saw the airplane approaching the runway from the south. He said that the airplane was, "coming in fast and steep," and that the airplane hit the runway at a steep angle. The airplane had not been issued an airworthiness certificate or amateur built operating limitations by the Federal Aviation Administration. An examination of the wreckage revealed no preexisting anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control and adequate airspeed, resulting in the inadvertent stall/spin. A factor was the low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA013
- Event ID
- 20021030X05405
- Case number
- CHI03LA013
- 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: de4267198dbf1b918eb4f9b280ac92486ec4d1a8203fd46fbe887e827091ab85; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:43:49.732Z.