MIA08LA105 · Aviate RAPTOR
Aviate RAPTOR · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Warrenton Air Park (7VG0) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA105
- 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
- 1 · 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
Aviate RAPTOR
- Aircraft type
- Aviate RAPTOR
- 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
- N74TK
- Operator
- Gottschalk James A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warrenton Air Park (7VG0), Warrenton, VATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff the pilot performed turns in both directions before continuing in a southeast direction. Global Positioning System data recovered from the accident aircraft revealed that while flying on nearly a constant heading, the airplane decelerated 36 miles-per-hour in a 6 second period. One witness heard a sputtering sound from the engine and several observed the aircraft descending steeply before it collided with trees. Another witness thought she saw a partially deployed parachute trailing from the steeply descending aircraft, but examination of the wreckage revealed the on-board ballistic parachute deployed on tree contact, and not prior to the initial upset. A snap hook utilized to secure the nose wires to the attach point of the nose hinge was not attached at either end, and was not located; however, this did not appear to be related to the accident for neither the crossbar nor the hinge displayed compression damage consistent with the snap hook separating in flight. Examination of the engine revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA105
- Event ID
- 20080710X01009
- Case number
- MIA08LA105
- 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. 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: 9ecdb20da82922339cedf69087e6d2fe314b8c47fb5d0d6ee09976b8b817f10b; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:14:34.040Z.