MIA08CA150 · Buckeye Breeze
Buckeye Breeze · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
From New Market, TN (no airport) to New Market, TN (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08CA150
- 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
Buckeye Breeze
- Aircraft type
- Buckeye BREEZE
- 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
- N3511N
- Operator
- James Thomas Whillock
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Market, TN (no airport)To New Market, TN (no airport)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
According to the student pilot, he went to a friend's farm field for a pleasure flight in his powered parachute. He took off about 1610 for a solo flight in the local area with no problems. Upon landing, a friend indicated that he would like to go for a flight. The student pilot did not see a problem with this and proceeded to take off with the passenger. The student pilot said that "unfortunately, I made an error in judgment, in reference to the length and preparation of the field and did not clear the trees at the end of the field." The aircraft crashed into the trees at the end of the runway. The student pilot further stated that "this accident could have been prevented had I not made a judgment error as to the length, condition [and] type of field used for takeoff. The field was not of sufficient length to get airborne [and] was a non improved farm field with obstacles at the departure end." Additionally, he stated that "density altitude was a concern since the temperature was 90 plus degrees with 65 or higher humidity which created a major lift problem for the machine."
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to consider the aircraft's performance for the takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08CA150
- Event ID
- 20081003X42119
- Case number
- MIA08CA150
- 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: 590ee99d7126cbdeeb251c07e43271f0b2303bc3d32c72e2ff72e2607a4c1e97; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:20:04.486Z.