WPR18LA217 · Smith HORNET
Smith HORNET · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From St George Regional Airport (SGU) to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA217
- 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
Smith HORNET
- Aircraft type
- Smith HORNET
- Category
- Airplane
- 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
- N218B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St George Regional Airport (SGU), St. George, UTTo St George Regional Airport (SGU), St. George, UT
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Video from a security camera at the airport showed the airplane taxiing toward the end of the runway, and then the airplane was no longer in the camera's view. Shortly thereafter, the airplane came back into the camera's view and was seen just above the runway surface in a nearly wings vertical, nose low attitude just before impact with the ground.
The owner of the airplane reported that the pilot had accumulated thousands of flight hours and estimated that he had a total of 5 flight hours in the accident airplane. The owner also stated that the pilot had flown the airplane only when the wind was calm to ensure that he could understand the airplane and its handling characteristics.
Postaccident examination of the airframe revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot's toxicology results indicated that he had taken a medically disqualifying medication. However, no evidence indicated that the use of the medication was a factor in the accident.
The airplane owner stated that a strong gust of wind, at a velocity that was strong enough to shake the building he was in, occurred just before the accident. About the time of the accident, the wind direction was reported as perpendicular to the runway surface, with a wind speed of 8 knots. No gusts were reported. The owner of the airplane also stated that random gusts of wind were relatively common at the airport due to the surrounding desert terrain. Thus, it is likely that the pilot experienced an unexpected strong gusting crosswind and lost control of the airplane during the takeoff sequence.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of airplane control during takeoff due to an unexpected gust of wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA217
- Event ID
- 20180811X32511
- Case number
- WPR18LA217
- 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, 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: cccb6e9d9863c6f6bedbf01cf3cc01e022a8ec36718a8222a4f9d7b120c0d658; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:45:47.420Z.