DEN08LA113 · Southern Powered Parachutes Condor
Southern Powered Parachutes Condor · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From North Central Missouri Regional Airport (MO8) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA113
- 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
Southern Powered Parachutes Condor
- Aircraft type
- Southern Powered Parachutes CONDOR
- Category
- Powered Parachute
- 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
- N3150U
- Operator
- William C. Wilson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Central Missouri Regional Airport (MO8), Brookfield, MOTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
Prior to the flight, the pilot and owner conducted a preflight of the aircraft and no anomalies were noted. The takeoff was normal and he climbed the aircraft to 500 feet above ground level (agl). At 500 feet agl, the aircraft encountered strong winds and the pilot elected to descend to a lower altitude as the surface winds were light and variable. The pilot stated that the 15 to 20 minute flight was a "good flight." While in the traffic pattern, the pilot executed shallow bank turns and a slow descent. During straight and level flight approximately 100 feet agl, the pilot experienced a loss of altitude and it felt as though the parachute folded in half. The pilot applied engine power; however, the aircraft impacted terrain. During the impact, the aircraft's left main landing gear struck terrain and the aircraft rolled over onto it's right side. In the days preceding the flight, the pilot read the operations manual for the aircraft. The pilot had no previous experience in powered parachutes and was going to become familiar with the airplane in order to eventually conduct flight training with the new owner.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control while maneuvering. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of familiarity and experience in the accident aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA113
- Event ID
- 20080715X01048
- Case number
- DEN08LA113
- 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: bb4cea22fe10a288883996a159af94dc695cfdfc7f71bc21d33e052a1871e975; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:54:41.036Z.