WPR09CA283 · Smith Albert F CHALLENGER TWO
Angel Wings Aviation Smith Albert F CHALLENGER TWO · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Moses Lake Municipal Airport (W20) to Moses Lake Municipal Airport (W20)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA283
- 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
Smith Albert F CHALLENGER TWO
- Aircraft type
- Smith Albert CHALLENGER TWO
- Category
- Airplane
- 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
- N7095K
- Operator
- Angel Wings Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moses Lake Municipal Airport (W20), Moses Lake, WATo Moses Lake Municipal Airport (W20), Moses Lake, WA
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor said that after completing a series of maneuvers in the local practice area, he had the student pilot enter the traffic pattern for runway 16. The student pilot was to execute a low approach above the runway and then go around. During the low approach as the airplane passed midfield, the right wing of the airplane began to lift up, and the airplane veered to the left of the runway. The student added full power. The flight instructor announced to the student pilot that he was taking control of the airplane. Despite the flight instructor’s attempts to level the wings and gain air speed to begin a climb, the left wing of the airplane impacted a stationary unoccupied airplane. The flight instructor added that in subsequent discussions with the student pilot, the student pilot informed him that he did not hear the flight instructor announce that he was taking control and never relinquished control of the airplane. The flight instructor stated that "at full power," the engine noise was "high enough to make communication impossible." Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the left and right wings were structurally damaged. The inspector reported that flight control continuity was established throughout the airplane to all primary flight controls. The reported wind at the time of the accident was 250 degrees for 8 knots, which equates to a right crosswind component of 8 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind condition and failure to maintain lateral roll control of the airplane. Also causal was the flight instructor's failure to effectively communicate his instruction to relinquish the flight controls to the student pilot and his inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA283
- Event ID
- 20090611X90556
- Case number
- WPR09CA283
- 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: 354a3130c777270085c2ccff86c0cfb20941681d7cc4a94270a1596858edd4dd; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:23:46.220Z.