ERA17FA265 · North Wing FREEDOM
North Wing FREEDOM · Accident: aircraft structural failure during initial climb
From 13N · Green Township, NJ to 13N · Green Township, NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17FA265
- 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
- 0
- 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 FREEDOM
- Aircraft type
- North Wing FREEDOM
- 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
- N2854L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 13N · Green Township, NJTo 13N · Green Township, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 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
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot planned to conduct a local flight in an experimental amateur-built weight-shift control aircraft that he built. A witness reported that the pilot had difficulty with one of the cables as he prepared the wing (which was foldable for storage) for flight and that he used a ratchet strap to help pull into place a cable that held the wing open for flight. Shortly after takeoff, when the aircraft was at an altitude of about 50 ft, the wing partially folded, and the aircraft descended into the ground.
A postaccident examination of the wing revealed that the cross-bar restraint cable, which held the wing in its open position, was not attached at its shackle and hook fitting at the rear of the wing keel tube. Additionally, the nylon webbing strap, which was attached to the steel cable shackle and designed to be used as a handle to pull the cable in place, was torn and separated from one mounting point and torn but still attached to the other mounting point. The shackle likely did not disengage from the hook during flight because the locking mechanism on the hook remained intact, was undamaged, and functioned normally. Given the witness report of the pilot's difficulty pulling the crossbar restraint cable into place, as well as the damage to the nylon webbing handle used to pull the cable, it is likely that the pilot inadvertently placed the nylon handle in the attachment hook instead of the steel shackle. Shortly after takeoff, the nylon handle likely tore from its mount, which caused the wing to partially fold, precluding the aircraft's continued flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight setup of the aircraft's foldable wing, during which he incorrectly attached a nylon strap loop pull handle, instead of the steel cable shackle at the end of the strap, to its mounting hook. The nylon strap failed in flight, resulting in a partial collapse of the wing and the aircraft's descent and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17FA265
- Event ID
- 20170806X15512
- Case number
- ERA17FA265
- 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: 24ac3957d95252ac801896acc46075b8a493d588ff6566f7f87d1018faf20d14; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:12:16.842Z.