MIA03LA150 · Turkan Delta Wing Kite Trik
Turkan Delta Wing Kite Trik · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From 3FD1 · Odessa, LA to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA03LA150
- 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
Turkan Delta Wing Kite Trik
- Aircraft type
- Turkan DELTA WING KITE TRIK
- 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 Narrative disagrees
- From 3FD1 · Odessa, LATo 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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Not connected
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A close friend of the pilot who witnessed the accident stated that the pilot had just finished installing a training bar, so that the aircraft could be controlled from the back seat when he was giving flight instruction, and the witness further stated that the pilot was taking the aircraft for a test flight. According to witnesses, during the flight, the aircraft departed to the west, and climbed to about 100 feet, when all of a sudden the wings folded up vertically, and the aircraft spun, descended, and impacted the ground. The witnesses also said that they did not notice any change in the sound of the engine throughout the flight's duration. An FAA inspector who responded to the scene of the accident stated that examination of the unregistered aircraft showed that the left hand attach fitting had not been properly attached to the left hand end of the horizontal control bar, which caused the wings to fold upward.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper assembly and failure to connect a bolt following an attempted modification that resulted in airframe malfunction, and uncontrolled descent, and an impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA03LA150
- Event ID
- 20030805X01261
- Case number
- MIA03LA150
- 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: e1f02477495f609dcbf8fc274c9d500c0fbb87005dd7b60dfdaadc110efad85b; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:01:17.053Z.