NYC08CA136 · J&J Ultralights Sea Wing
J&J Ultralights Sea Wing · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Live Oak, FL (no airport) to Live Oak, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA136
- 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
J&J Ultralights Sea Wing
- Aircraft type
- J J Ultralights SEA WING
- 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
- N7711Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Live Oak, FL (no airport)To Live Oak, FL
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot of the amateur built SeaWing weight-shift control aircraft was in his first day of solo flight training. He successfully completed "a few" solo takeoffs and landings when the winds increased, which prompted him to switch to a field adjacent to the one he was using. On short final, the aircraft drifted towards trees to the right of the nominal approach path. The pilot initiated a go-around, and applied control inputs that were intended to correct the flight path to the left. The pilot's control inputs caused the aircraft to turn right, and it collided with the trees. The impact resulted in substantial damage to the aircraft, and serious injuries to the pilot. The pilot had approximately 700 hours in airplanes, and was learning to fly the accident aircraft. The pitch and directional control inputs for a weight-shift aircraft were opposite those required for an airplane. The flight instructor and student were cognizant of the potential for problems caused by the difference in required control inputs, but neither observed any tendency of the student to make incorrect inputs on any previous flights. The pilot stated that on the accident approach, he reverted to his original training, which was correct for a conventional airplane, but incorrect for the accident aircraft.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during a go-around. Contributing to the accident was his habit interference from previously flying conventional airplanes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA136
- Event ID
- 20080414X00474
- Case number
- NYC08CA136
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: cfe5c61376fd2294c6496154c4e2ae736ddb50e69ea158c09c1dcfb399ba0d97; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:32:03.722Z.