WPR12FA155 · Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA-300
Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA-300 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Salinas Municipal Airport (KSNS) to Salinas Municipal Airport (KSNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12FA155
- 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
- 2 · 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
Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA-300
- Aircraft type
- Extra EA-300
- 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
- N45R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salinas Municipal Airport (KSNS), Salinas, CATo Salinas Municipal Airport (KSNS), Salinas, CA
- 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 · aerobatics
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/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 systems
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Radar data recorded the airplane operating between 3,500 feet and 1,500 feet mean sea level. Two witnesses observed the airplane performing aerobatics. One witness stated that he observed the airplane perform two chandelles over the foothills north of his house, then the airplane turned south heading into an open valley. The airplane completed two aileron rolls and was halfway into a third roll when the nose pitched down, then pitched up, and the airplane rolled so that one wing was pointing down. The airplane then simultaneously rolled inverted and pitched down entering a very rapid descent into the ground. The witness stated that the engine was operating at what sounded like full power throughout the event.
On-scene examination determined that the airplane impacted the ground with the left wing down and a 30-degree nose-down pitch. The wreckage examination identified a loose, puck-like, 4.5-inch diameter portable XM-GPS antenna in the empennage tail space that houses the elevator bell crank. The antenna had a 9-mm diameter semicircular indentation witness mark that was consistent in shape and size to the end of a 9-mm diameter bolt that attaches the forward spar of the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage frame, located directly above the elevator bell crank. The antenna location and associated witness mark indicate that the unsecured antenna migrated to the tail section of the airplane and obstructed the free movement of the elevator bell crank, limiting the pilot’s ability to control the airplane in pitch. The pilot had opened a weather service account linked through the XM-GPS antenna about 1 week before the accident. The GPS unit intended for use with the XM-GPS antenna was not located with the wreckage.
Probable cause
A loose portable XM-GPS antenna that migrated to the tail section of the airplane and jammed the elevator bell crank. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to account for the cockpit portable GPS antenna during preflight or postflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12FA155
- Event ID
- 20120408X21850
- Case number
- WPR12FA155
- 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: c08950c417baa1c4106baca4efa10f52cd602d2f7ca6707760927f33f93e8fef; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:18:24.249Z.