WPR23LA209 · Pipistrel DOO Ajdovscina VIRUS SW
Pipistrel DOO Ajdovscina VIRUS SW · Accident: hard landing
From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0) to Santa Fe Municipal Airport (KSAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA209
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Pipistrel DOO Ajdovscina VIRUS SW
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel Doo Ajdovscina VIRUS SW
- 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
- N69PV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0), Moriarty, NMTo Santa Fe Municipal Airport (KSAF), Santa Fe, NM
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he experienced severe turbulence within about 10 miles of the airport as he was approaching to land. He further reported that during the landing, the airplane encountered a downdraft and bounced on touchdown. The airplane exited the runway to the left onto an adjacent grass area and nosed over, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. The pilot reported there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation during landing.
Probable cause
An encounter with a downdraft during landing that resulted in a hard landing and the pilot’s loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA209
- Event ID
- 20230605192303
- Case number
- WPR23LA209
- 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: 860daa3e83fe702e269c343cb566cd65a4e690d91f9d1f594697b70f619318b9; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:41:07.283Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. City misspelled; KSAF is Santa Fe Regional Airport at Santa Fe, NM, the recorded accident location.