ERA18LA188 · Northwing 17 M
Northwing 17 M · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Section, AL to Section, AL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA188
- 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
Northwing 17 M
- Aircraft type
- Northwing 17
- 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
- N959RR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Section, ALTo Section, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 13 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
- Landing · aborted after touchdown
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot had purchased the experimental light sport weight-shift-control trike about 1 month before the accident and had not flown it. The day before the accident, the pilot mowed a runway into the tall grass behind his home. On the day of the accident, the pilot asked his wife if she wanted to watch him taxi the aircraft; she did not realize he was going to fly it. He taxied back and forth a few times on runway, then initiated a takeoff. About 10 minutes later, the pilot returned to the runway for landing. The aircraft abruptly touched down, then bounced back into the air. Remaining airborne, it turned to the right and the right wing impacted the top of a tree before the aircraft subsequently impacted the ground.
Examination of the aircraft revealed no mechanical discrepancies that would have precluded normal operation at that time of the accident. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with a loss of control during an aborted landing.
Probable cause
The noncertificated pilot's failure to maintain control of the weight-shift-control aircraft during an aborted landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of flight experience in the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA188
- Event ID
- 20180710X03854
- Case number
- ERA18LA188
- 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: d7ddfc58d671f9e5aaaeb875554b87a44819fbafbb80c077fa5f8b5e0db5688f; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:51.758Z.