WPR17FA033 · Airborne Windsports PTY Ltd EDGE XT-912-L
Airborne Windsports PTY Ltd EDGE XT-912-L · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA) to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17FA033
- 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
- 1 · 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
Airborne Windsports PTY Ltd EDGE XT-912-L
- Aircraft type
- Airborne Windsports EDGE XT-912-L
- 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
- N188M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, CATo Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, CA
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2016)
- 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 downwind
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the weight-shift control aircraft uneventfully departed runway 15 and made a right turn to the crosswind leg of the traffic pattern. He then requested and was cleared for the downwind leg for the intersecting runway. While making the turn to the downwind leg, the aircraft entered a rapid descent and impacted the ground near an apartment complex. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The crankshaft exhibited torsional twisting, consistent with the engine producing power at the time of impact.
The pilot purchased the aircraft new and took delivery 4 days before the accident. Review of his logbook revealed 65 total hours of flight experience, with 12 hours in the accident aircraft make and model; however, his flight experience in the accident aircraft could not be determined.
Toxicology testing on the pilot was positive for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the primary psychoactive component of marijuana) and tetrahydrocannabinol carboxylic acid (THC-COOH, an inactive metabolite); however, there is no established direct relationship between blood levels and impairment. Therefore, it could not be determined whether psychoactive effects from the pilot's use of marijuana contributed to the accident.
Although the circumstances of the accident are consistent with a loss of control in the airport traffic pattern, the investigation was unable to determine the reason for the loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control while maneuvering in the traffic pattern.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17FA033
- Event ID
- 20161206X45332
- Case number
- WPR17FA033
- 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: 30e028a4eb7b5044d56fc6c65dbc9d1b92193681ceceb11840b21b058ea3deb3; retrieved 2026-09-14T22:03:13.463Z.