LAX07LA027 · Air Creations Tanarg 912
Air Creations Tanarg 912 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Rodeo Airport (NM70) to Bisbee Douglas International Airport (DUG)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA027
- 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
- 2 · 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
Air Creations Tanarg 912
- Aircraft type
- Air Creations TANARG 912
- 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 Rodeo Airport (NM70), Rodeo, NMTo Bisbee Douglas International Airport (DUG), Bisbee, AZ
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 unregistered aircraft collided with a steep mountainside. A pilot, who was flying an ultralight in tandem with the accident aircraft, stated that the accident pilot was providing instruction to the student pilot on the cross-country flight. The accident pilot maintained radio communication with him as they both maneuvered through the valleys that led to their intended destination. Throughout the flight, the radio signal was intermittent due to the contours of the terrain. The ultralight pilot further stated that after egressing the valleys he turned around to scan the surrounding area and could not obtain visual contact of the accident aircraft. He headed back up the valley and saw smoke behind a mountain ridge. He circled over the smoke and observed a small brush fire, but could not discern any aircraft structure. He stated that the winds at the time of the accident were calm and there was no turbulence or mountain wave in the areas they were flying. The inaccessibility of the accident site prohibited the wreckage from being recovered.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA027
- Event ID
- 20061114X01650
- Case number
- LAX07LA027
- 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: f797fe4c9b116e719d99300047d5aea5209008009cefca19e48928afaa50bad3; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:00:37.792Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. Air Creations Tanarg 912 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.