CHI08LA297 · Powrachute Corp PEGASUS
Powrachute Corp PEGASUS · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Mark's Park & Airfield (3WN4) to Mark's Park & Airfield (3WN4)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08LA297
- 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
Powrachute Corp PEGASUS
- Aircraft type
- Powrachute PEGASUS
- 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
- N7084L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mark's Park & Airfield (3WN4), New London, WITo Mark's Park & Airfield (3WN4), New London, WI
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and flight instructor of the powered parachute had accomplished approximately 10 touch-and-goes prior to the accident, and "everything went perfectly." However, when the aircraft touched down on the final landing the nose wheel support failed causing the aircraft to ground loop. During the accident sequence the steering bar struck the student pilot in the chest. A postaccident examination revealed that the nose wheel front fork support had failed at a welded joint immediately forward of the airframe attachment bolt. Visual examination of the weld indicated a lack of penetration at the joint. In addition, the weld material did not appear to be of a uniform thickness. The manufacturer subsequently issued a service bulletin advising owners of two failures of the welded joint on the front fork support. The manufacturer recommended that supports be replaced with a Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welded support. The original support may have been Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welded without proper penetration, according to the bulletin.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of directional control during landing due to failure of the nose wheel support as a result of an inadequate weld.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08LA297
- Event ID
- 20081010X43245
- Case number
- CHI08LA297
- 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: 404556e8ea796b9ac3171da4f37ab1e45adf54dd3bcbb241e90ae103a06f4747; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:27:18.482Z.