DFW08CA213 · Aerotrike Spirit
Aerotrike Spirit · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA213
- 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
Aerotrike Spirit
- Aircraft type
- Aerotrike SPIRIT
- 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
- N226MB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64), Vinland Valley, KSTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor and student pilot had just departed in the flight instructor's experimental light sport (weight-shift) aircraft when it began to drift to the left of the runway centerline. The flight instructor, who was also on the controls with the student pilot, reported that there was a three mile per hour crosswind from the right, so they both moved the bar to the left to correct for the wind and positioned the aircraft back to the right and over the runway centerline. However, once the correction was made, the aircraft continued to drift to the right. The instructor stated that he was telling the student to move the control bar to the right, and the student said he was trying but he was unable to lift the wing. The instructor, who was still on the controls, said that he was also trying to lift the wing but to no avail and the aircraft continued to bank sharply to the right. When the airplane's bank angle reached approximately 45 degrees, the instructor realized that the aircraft was going to stall so he pushed the control bar forward. The aircraft hit the ground with the right wing and came to rest about 300 feet to the right of the runway in a plowed field. Examination of the airplane revealed the wing and frame sustained substantial damage. The propeller was also damaged. No pre mishap discrepancies were noted with the airframe or the engine.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the sport aircraft on takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA213
- Event ID
- 20080916X01467
- Case number
- DFW08CA213
- 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: 9bd0175f8d9fa4541f045b46dcee1c60722e19b525b2f555b59dd94489ebde64; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:13:20.243Z.