LAX08LA050 · Air Creation Clipper
Air Creation Clipper · Accident: loss of control in flight
From Ruby Star Airpark (14AZ) to Ruby Star Airpark (14AZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA050
- 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 Creation Clipper
- Aircraft type
- Air Creation CLIPPER
- 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
- N614LF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ruby Star Airpark (14AZ), Green Valley, AZTo Ruby Star Airpark (14AZ), Green Valley, 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
- Unknown
- Defining eventThe 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and his new student pilot departed in the student's experimental weight-shift-control aircraft (trike) for a local area instructional flight on a day with calm winds. No witnesses reported observing the trike after it took off, and the trike's route of flight was not determined. The trike impacted the desert in a nose-down attitude, without disturbing surrounding vegetation. The preimpact integrity of the trike's flight control system was confirmed, with no evidence of incorrect assembly. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction was found with the engine or propeller assembly. No evidence of ethanol or drugs was found in either pilot. Autopsies revealed that both pilots sustained injuries consistent with a rapid-deceleration-type impact. The reason for the trike's departure from controlled flight and uncontrolled descent was not determined.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control and an uncontrolled descent into terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA050
- Event ID
- 20080208X00159
- Case number
- LAX08LA050
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 80f107ea690f799a1b35eab171ee33efde02f01411f167e5e37521e7a7835f16; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:55:18.436Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. Air Creation Clipper 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.