WPR23LA025 · Airborne Windsports Edge X
Airborne Windsports Edge X · Accident: loss of control in flight
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA025
- 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
Airborne Windsports Edge X
- Aircraft type
- Airborne Windsports EDGE
- 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
- N354MB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was observed flying around the area at an unknown time on the day of the accident, but no other information was available about the flight. At about 1800, law enforcement received a notification that aircraft wreckage was discovered on the airport property between a runway and a taxiway. There were no known witnesses to the accident. Before the aircraft was sold to the non-certificated accident pilot, the previous owner had provided the pilot with several familiarization flights and emphasized the importance of obtaining instructional lessons since he had no experience with weight-shift-controlled aircraft. However, the pilot disregarded the advice likely because he assumed the aircraft had similar handling characteristics to hang gliders, which he had previous experience operating. Toxicology testing revealed the pilot had used cannabis; however, since no psychoactive THC or psychoactive metabolite was found in blood samples, it is unlikely that the pilot was under the influence of THC at the time of the accident. Given the pilot’s lack of experience in power gliders and the signature of the terrain impact, it is most likely that the pilot lost control of the power glider for undetermined reasons.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot’s loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA025
- Event ID
- 20221026106206
- Case number
- WPR23LA025
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-10-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 05a78a953d8998359040a08f43e51ea0dc06230e396af9ce4d1efecd77fb1311; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:53:26.050Z.