WPR15LA255 · Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA 300/L
Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA 300/L · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Jerome County Airport (JER) to Jerome County Airport (JER)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA255
- 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
Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA 300/L
- 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
- N4BM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jerome County Airport (JER), Jerome, IDTo Jerome County Airport (JER), Jerome, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 1996)
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a local personal flight. A witness located at the airport reported that he observed the accident airplane take off and then head southwest. He then observed the airplane perform a loop, and he estimated that, at the top of the maneuver, the airplane was about 1,500 ft above ground level. As the airplane began leveling off at the bottom of the loop, it descended out of the witness's line of sight behind a building. The pilot reported that he did not recall anything about the flight.
Postaccident examination of the recovered wreckage did not reveal any preexisting mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Wreckage and impact signatures were consistent with a high-energy, low-angle impact with terrain. It is likely that the pilot did not properly gauge the airplane's distance from terrain while conducting the low-altitude aerobatic maneuver and failed to level off in time to avoid impacting terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain while conducting a low-altitude aerobatic maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA255
- Event ID
- 20150902X73001
- Case number
- WPR15LA255
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-09-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5dec7a4573619a3618fc84cde020174044af772fa880fd7121b335132ce65906; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:44:41.050Z.