CEN22LA008 · SEA & SKY Inc KRUCKER CYGNET
SEA & SKY Inc KRUCKER CYGNET · Accident: abrupt maneuver while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA008
- 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
SEA & SKY Inc KRUCKER CYGNET
- Aircraft type
- Sea SKY KRUCKER CYGNET
- 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
- N38AT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot’s wife, who witnessed the accident flight, reported that he trailered the aircraft to a nearby marina, set up the aircraft, and took off. He flew westbound about 150 ft above the water and made several turns without issue. Another witness reported that the engine sounded “normal” and “steady” when the aircraft pitched up steeply. It kept climbing and this witness thought the pilot was conducting an aerobatic maneuver. The nose of the aircraft dropped, and the aircraft descended into the water. Neither witness reported any visual anomalies with the aircraft.
A postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operations.
Varying coastlines, such as the peninsula where the accident flight was conducted, can also affect local wind conditions by creating areas of convergence. Updrafts, downdrafts, and thermals can cause the nose of a weight-shift-control aircraft to raise and lower during flight. Since the pilot was reportedly accustomed to flying over the ocean, it is possible the local wind conditions affected the aircraft in ways he did not expect. It was likely in response to these wind conditions that the pilot abruptly pitched the aircraft that resulted in a nose-high attitude and subsequent stall at a low altitude, which did not allow for recovery before the aircraft impacted the water.
Probable cause
The pilot’s abrupt pitch up maneuver in response to the localized wind conditions which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude and subsequent impact with water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA008
- Event ID
- 20211007104065
- Case number
- CEN22LA008
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-10-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dcd01f7c9320532500f08856e14e850e6e599592086d16cf03064c1208835669; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:35:07.258Z.