WPR16LA080 · North Wing APACHE
North Wing APACHE · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Queen Creek, AZ to Queen Creek, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA080
- 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
North Wing APACHE
- Aircraft type
- North Wing APACHE
- 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
- N242WT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Queen Creek, AZTo Queen Creek, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot reported that, after takeoff in the light sport trike, about 200 ft above ground level, he heard a popping sound and the aircraft yawed to the right. He heard the sound a second time, and the aircraft turned hard to the right. The pilot applied full engine power in an attempt to recover and gain lift in order to deploy the ballistic parachute; however, the aircraft did not recover and subsequently collided with the ground in a nose-down attitude.
Postaccident examination of the aircraft revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the investigation was unable to determine the cause of the yaw and subsequent loss of control. The pilot was not appropriately certificated, nor did he have any experience flying the accident aircraft make and model.
Probable cause
A loss of control for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Contributing to the accident was the noncertificated pilot’s lack of experience in the aircraft type.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA080
- Event ID
- 20160305X80702
- Case number
- WPR16LA080
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 12aae08fb2710b1d30690356710da1dbef27b88bfd7483bcae290608d848d937; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:12:16.966Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. NORTH WING APACHE NO SERIES is a weight-shift (trike); the manufacturer builds nothing else. The NTSB MDB codes it AIR (Airplane), which is how the aircraft was registered rather than what it is.