NYC07LA143 · Northwing Design Apache Quest
Northwing Design Apache Quest · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Hartness State Airport (VSF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA143
- 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
Northwing Design Apache Quest
- Aircraft type
- Northwing Design APACHE QUEST
- 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
- N425DW
- Operator
- Jeff Nicolay
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartness State Airport (VSF), Springfield, VTTo 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
- 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 obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, design change, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot was a co-owner of the aircraft kit manufacturing company, involving the accident airplane. On the day of the accident, the pilot planned to test an alternate wing design, which was to be sold in an aircraft kit to a new customer. The pilot did not have a fuselage available to test the wing, so he asked the owner of the accident airplane to fly to the airport, and assist him with testing the alternate wing. The owner of the airplane agreed, flew to the airport, and assisted the accident pilot in securing the alternate wing to the fuselage of his airplane. The pilot then departed from the airport, and shortly after takeoff, witnesses observed the airplane nose over and impact a lake. The pilot was unable to release his seatbelt, as he was not familiar with this type of fuselage, and was pulled from the airplane by a witness, prior to it sinking in the lake. Examination of the airplane revealed the wing was "defective," and not compatible with the fuselage.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control, due to the installation of an alternate wing design.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA143
- Event ID
- 20070718X00955
- Case number
- NYC07LA143
- 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: 320235991898fbd4c9ca430a9c024635f62ef75512bfecb05f3610e7fd63e113; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:48:01.513Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. Northwing Design Apache Quest 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.