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WPR19FA106 · Tecnam P2002

8 Apr 2019 · Santa Fe, NM, United States

Tecnam P2002 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb

From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
WPR19FA106
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
2 · 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

Tecnam P2002

Aircraft type
Tecnam P2002
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
N118LS
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NMTo not recorded
Aircraft age
About 13 years (built 2006)
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
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
Destroyed

Cause areas

  • Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting a touch-and-go landing. Surveillance footage showed that, shortly after takeoff, the airplane appeared to stop climbing. The right wing then dropped and the airplane entered a steep, nose-down attitude and impacted the ground. A postimpact fire ensued. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.

At the time of the accident, the density altitude was calculated to be about 8,600 ft. Given the available evidence, it is likely that the engine’s performance was degraded by the high density altitude and the airplane’s critical angle of attack was exceeded during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of control.

Probable cause

The flight instructor’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, an aerodynamic stall, and loss of control.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record WPR19FA106
Event ID
20190408X94603
Case number
WPR19FA106
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, cause areas. 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: 907b1b1fefabd541152dfba9ec2bc43d31dd705d348d9c1c5110766aae104095; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:56:21.514Z.