SEA04LA112 · Cosmos Phase II
Cosmos Phase II · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to Bandera State Airport (4W0)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA112
- 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
- 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
Cosmos Phase II
- Aircraft type
- Cosmos PHASE
- Category
- Weight-Shift
- 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 Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo Bandera State Airport (4W0), Bandera, WA
- 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
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Clearance, 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
The pilot reported that the landing was uneventful, however, during the landing roll a sudden gust of wind from the right pushed the aircraft toward the left side of the runway and the "Welcome to Bandera" sign. The aircraft struck the sign, and shortly after the aircraft came to rest, the pilot heard a "whoomp" sound followed by the start of a fire. The pilot released his seatbelt and exited the aircraft sustaining serious burns to his lower legs and feet. The aircraft was then consumed by the fire. The pilot reported that he believed that the fuel tank was ruptured when he collided with the sign and traveled over the rough terrain which splattered fuel onto the hot section of the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from an airport sign during the landing roll. Inadequate compensation for the wind gust and the sign were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA112
- Event ID
- 20040622X00848
- Case number
- SEA04LA112
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 18ee827460c14e72b5d56f597858875564727839879ab37ef3d567635be77ed4; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:16:11.066Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. Cosmos Phase II is a weight-shift (trike); the manufacturer builds nothing else. The NTSB MDB codes it AIR (Airplane), which is how the aircraft was registered rather than what it is.