WPR21LA003 · Evolution Revo
Evolution Revo · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA003
- 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
Evolution Revo
- Aircraft type
- Evolution REVO
- 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
- N449WB
- Operator
- Joe K Audette · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2015)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing on a personal flight in a light sport aircraft. Shortly after departing from the runway, the aircraft veered to the right and then banked to the right to clear a fence, after which the aircraft descended and struck a tree and a culvert wall. The engine was running throughout the flight. Postaccident examination revealed no evidence of preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Recorded engine data indicated that the engine was producing power at the time of the accident. Although the pilot’s experience in the light sport aircraft could not be established, a witness reported that, after a previous takeoff “a couple of years" before the accident, the pilot had incorrectly steered the aircraft toward the airport tower before recognizing the error and correcting the aircraft’s flightpath. The same witness also reported that departing aircraft typically make a left bank—rather than a right bank—after takeoff. Thus, during the accident takeoff, the pilot likely manipulated the steering controls incorrectly, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent impact with the tree and culvert.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA003
- Event ID
- 20201004102078
- Case number
- WPR21LA003
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: a9dd686b19da39b7f883016275d196f386ab105967b3fa3305366b3a09bab868; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:20:48.758Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. Evolution Revo is a weight-shift (trike); the manufacturer builds nothing else. The NTSB MDB codes it AIR (Airplane), which is how the aircraft was registered rather than what it is.