CEN17LA042 · Northwing NAVAJO
Northwing NAVAJO · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Greater Morris County Airport (8F5) to Greater Morris County Airport (8F5)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA042
- 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
Northwing NAVAJO
- Aircraft type
- Northwing NAVAJO
- 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
- N360XL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greater Morris County Airport (8F5), Daingerfield, TXTo Greater Morris County Airport (8F5), Daingerfield, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2001)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot stated that he was unfamiliar with the accident aircraft, a light sport trike; only intended to do a high-speed taxi; and had no intention to fly. He indicated that, during the taxi test, the airplane "must have experienced a gust of wind," and the airplane lifted off, turned hard to the left, and crashed into the trees alongside the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wing. The postaccident examination did not note any mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operations. The pilot reported that he had received some flight training and had some experience flying ultralights but that the controls in the ultralights were different than the controls in the accident aircraft.
Probable cause
The noncertificated pilot’s unfamiliarity with the aircraft, which resulted in a loss of control during an unintentional takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA042
- Event ID
- 20161123X53627
- Case number
- CEN17LA042
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4067aede8c4259618a30f98d5444c5f5d5a0d40885c7b9685d1dd45fa0d325e4; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:51:25.429Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. NORTHWING NAVAJO 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.