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CEN09CA362 · Airborne Windsports PTY Ltd XT-912

15 Jun 2009 · Alamogordo, NM, United States

Airborne Windsports PTY Ltd XT-912 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing

From Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (KALM) to Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (KALM)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN09CA362
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

Airborne Windsports PTY Ltd XT-912

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
N594VZ
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (KALM), Alamogordo, NMTo Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (KALM), Alamogordo, NM
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 · flare/touchdown
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 on ground
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
  • 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 sport pilot was performing a touch-and-go landing on Runway 03. The pilot had checked weather conditions approximately 15 minutes prior, and the winds were from 360 degrees at 11 knots gusting to 20 knots. During this landing, the winds were reported to be from 360 degrees at approximately 8 knots. The pilot decided to angle his landing on the runway approximately 20 degrees, since the weight-shift airplane did not require a long ground run. Upon touchdown, a gust of wind pushed the airplane off the side of the runway. The pilot corrected back to the runway and attempted to take off. Another gust of wind lifted one side of the wing resulting in a loss of directional control. The weight-shift airplane rolled inverted before coming to rest on the runway, causing substantial damage to the fabric wing, wing spars, and suspension cables.

Probable cause

The failure of the pilot to maintain directional control while landing with gusting winds.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN09CA362
Event ID
20090616X45722
Case number
CEN09CA362
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: fbd1b81afcff0a7df9a49fab165f2904e3b5809896d36ed35008a744acf7771c; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:28:11.432Z.