WPR11LA081 · Apollo AS-III
Apollo AS-III · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
From Port Allen Airport (PAK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA081
- 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
Apollo AS-III
- Aircraft type
- Apollo AS-III
- 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
- N157AP
- Operator
- Big Sky Kauai
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Port Allen Airport (PAK), Hanapepe, HITo not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 handling/service
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The special light sport weight-shift control aircraft, commonly referred to as a "trike," took off from its base on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, on a "discovery" flight. On board were the instructor-rated pilot and the passenger-student. According to the pilot, while in cruise flight about 45 minutes after takeoff, the aircraft became "extremely difficult" to control, and the fabric wing skin was "fluttering intensely" along its trailing edge. The pilot opted for a precautionary landing on a nearby golf course. During the landing roll, the aircraft tipped onto one wing.
Postlanding examination of the aircraft revealed that the fabric nose cone that was installed over the centerline juncture of the two wing leading edge tubes was damaged. The purpose of the nose cone was to prevent ram air from entering and inflating the wings during flight, which would change the wing profiles and result in controllability problems. The aircraft manufacturer indicated that the nose cone damage was primarily due to the nose cone being left in place when the wings were folded for transport or storage, a practice which was strongly discouraged by the manufacturer. In addition, although the manufacturer recommended against unprotected storage of the aircraft to preclude fabric deterioration from the elements, the pilot was known to store the aircraft outside on a regular basis. In combination, those practices by the pilot, which were contrary to the manufacturer's guidance, resulted in the degradation and eventual failure of the nose cone. With the aircraft on its wheels, the nose cone and upper surface of the wing were at least 8 feet above the ground, but there was no evidence that the operator or the accident pilot had or utilized a stepladder or other means to access and inspect the nose cone and wing upper surface before flight. The lack of equipment to conduct a thorough preflight inspection prevented timely detection of the deterioration of the nose cone.
Probable cause
The pilot's lack of compliance with manufacturer's guidance for care and handling of the aircraft combined with incomplete preflight inspections, which resulted in an undetected material failure of the nose cone.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA081
- Event ID
- 20101223X00120
- Case number
- WPR11LA081
- 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: 2f18ce43c85307a54f57cd937849efe01e3722cd779ee9d057c81e36658cbe94; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:38:26.712Z.