WPR12LA417 · Seymour SKYRANGER
Seymour SKYRANGER · Accident en route
From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO) to Perris Valley Airport (L65)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA417
- 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
Seymour SKYRANGER
- Aircraft type
- Seymour SKYRANGER
- 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
- N936LS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CATo Perris Valley Airport (L65), Perris, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight in the experimental amateur-built airplane, the pilot heard a "bang" sound, and the airplane immediately began to descend and roll to the left. He applied opposing aileron and right rudder control inputs and was able to regain partial control; however, as the descent progressed, the airplane's turn rate began to increase. The airplane struck the ground in a left-wing-low attitude, sustaining substantial damage. Examination of the airframe did not reveal any failures or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Although postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed two separated cables (a wing brace and an elevator trim tab cable), physical evidence indicated that the cable separations most likely occurred during the accident sequence. Additionally, if the elevator trim tab cable had separated in flight, the movement of the trim tab to the up position likely would not have resulted in the flight control difficulties experienced by the pilot. Thus, it was not possible to determine why the airplane departed controlled flight and why the pilot was unable to regain control.
Probable cause
A loss of aircraft control during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA417
- Event ID
- 20120913X73204
- Case number
- WPR12LA417
- 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: 9c3401609691640513b9ce4682e0f0ad97240e06d69598dcbea97ed7b594dfc7; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:51:38.024Z.