WPR11CA041 · Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From 36U · Heber City, UT to 36U · Heber City, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA041
- 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
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N178WW
- Operator
- Stern Lessing S
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 36U · Heber City, UTTo 36U · Heber City, UT
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was practicing the procedures for making approaches to back-country remote airstrips and was flying in approach configuration about 40 to 60 feet over a mountain ridge. Although the wind was light and variable, just as the airplane was crossing the ridge it encountered a downdraft, which resulted in a sudden loss of altitude. Before the pilot was able to correct the descent, one of the airplane's main landing gear tires came in contact with the snow-covered terrain, which resulted in the airplane slowing down and flipping over onto its back. The accident sequence resulted in damage to the top of the rudder and to one of the wing lift struts. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the ground during low-level maneuvering in mountainous/hilly terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA041
- Event ID
- 20101108X43405
- Case number
- WPR11CA041
- 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: 4758901fc927d06d0fd912e32cca6b812a2f5036e2f8d0da96dec3e459b67028; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:32:52.180Z.