WPR12FA295 · TL Ultralight SRO STINGSPORT
Bell Harry A Trustee TL Ultralight SRO STINGSPORT · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Van Nuys, CA to Van Nuys, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12FA295
- 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
TL Ultralight SRO STINGSPORT
- Aircraft type
- TL Ultralight STINGSPORT
- 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
- N177N
- Operator
- Bell Harry A Trustee
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys, CATo Van Nuys, 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and commercial pilot were conducting a flight review during daytime visual flight rules conditions. Multiple witnesses near the accident site reported observing the accident airplane descending in a nose-low attitude while spinning. Witness reports, findings from the wreckage examination and recovered GPS data are consistent with the airplane entering a stall as part of the flight review and a subsequent spin. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane was equipped with dual flight controls; however, it could not be determined which pilot was manipulating the controls at the time of the accident nor could it be determined why neither pilot was able to recover from the spin.
The airplane was also equipped with a rescue ballistic parachute system. The arming handle was found fractured from the cabin roof due to a force on the handle that loaded the adhesive joint in peel mode. The arming pin was not engaged within the arming handle and exhibited a permanent bend. Fretting wear deposits were present on the retaining pin shank, suggesting that the pin was most likely engaged within the handle a significant portion of the time when the airplane was in motion. It could not be determined if the arming pin was removed before the flight or at some point during the flight. The parachute was not deployed.
Medical record review revealed that the left seat pilot had significant preexisting heart disease. However, due to the limitations of the available medical evidence, the investigation could not determine if the pilot had an acute cardiac event during the flight that degraded his ability to operate the aircraft. Toxicology tests for the pilot were positive for Metoprolol, Ticlopidine, and Valsartan, which are commonly used to treat high blood pressure and angina, to control heart rate in some arrhythmias, and to reduce the risk of stroke.
Toxicology testing for the flight instructor, who was seated in the right seat, revealed evidence of previous marijuana use; however no active compound was detected in the postmortem blood, thus it is unlikely that he was experiencing acute impairment from marijuana at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to recover from a stall, which resulted in a spin. Contributing to the accident was the instructor’s inadequate remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12FA295
- Event ID
- 20120705X85000
- Case number
- WPR12FA295
- 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: 1f0dab5be9913d091ee9233e5f635addcee56246fc7090397753e4013116228b; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:28:10.974Z.