ERA15CA031 · Solo Wings AQUILLA
Solo Wings AQUILLA · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55) to Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA031
- 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
Solo Wings AQUILLA
- Aircraft type
- Solo Wings AQUILLA
- 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
- N55446
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55), Eustis, FLTo Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55), Eustis, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2008)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
According to the pilot of the weight shift aircraft, the flight was his first solo flight and he had flown earlier in the day with a flight instructor. Shortly after takeoff the aircraft encountered a wind shift and turbulent air. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the pilot flew south of the airport and entered a two-mile final for the runway. During the final approach leg, about 50 feet above ground level, the aircraft encountered "violent turbulence." The pilot subsequently lost control of the aircraft and impacted a lake short of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the aircraft wing and structural tubing. He further reported that due to the absence of a rear seat passenger the position of the control bar was different than what he was used to. He also reported that there were no mechanical abnormalities or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The wind recorded at an airport 10 miles to the west, around the time of the accident, was from 300 degrees at 4 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the final approach in turbulent conditions, which resulted in a collision with water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA031
- Event ID
- 20141028X10957
- Case number
- ERA15CA031
- 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: 5c641c975f9c15bd50aa99a7071446e6a2d4df4ee9522dba7b3f2e8b41157182; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:53:11.809Z.