ERA12CA389 · Buckeye Aviation BREEZE
Buckeye Aviation BREEZE · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lower Burrell, PA to Lower Burrell, PA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA389
- 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
Buckeye Aviation BREEZE
- Aircraft type
- Buckeye BREEZE
- Category
- Powered Parachute
- 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
- N786DS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lower Burrell, PATo Lower Burrell, PA
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the powered parachute had been “pushed” by wind toward the trees throughout the approach. The parachute webbing became caught in the trees, and the undercarriage cart suspended below the parachute fell and impacted the ground on all three wheels. The pilot did not possess a pilot certificate and had received no formalized flight training. He had flown the powered parachute for about 15 hours before the accident. A postaccident examination revealed that the powered parachute sustained substantial damage to the undercarriage cart and that there were no pre-existing mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. A 3-knot crosswind existed during the approach.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the powered parachute, which resulted in a collision with trees during final approach. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of flight training.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA389
- Event ID
- 20120612X35633
- Case number
- ERA12CA389
- 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: 9103007d5864961128a45c4d16f1d9bc0a574fde7c2051b05daa3f794b8258b1; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:27:58.128Z.