WPR23LA259 · Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person during landing
From North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA259
- 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
- 0 · 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
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N307F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2007)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel equipped airplane reported that he intended to land on a dry lakebed behind a model that was being photographed and create a ‘wall of dust’ using the airplane for a photograph. During the landing roll, the pilot stated he was moving too fast to stop before reaching the model and elected to execute a go-around. He then returned to the lakebed and landed, where he saw that the model had been seriously injured. According to the photographer, he and his model had been approached by the pilot, who offered his airplane as a backdrop for the photo shoot. After taking several photographs near the airplane, the pilot offered to overfly the model for additional photographs. The pilot flew over the model twice, and on the third flyover, the airplane was lower than the previous passes and the airplane’s left wing struck the model in the back of the head. Following the accident, the photographer obtained images from other photographers of the pilot performing similar maneuvers over other models at low altitude. Title 14 of the Combined Federal Regulations, § 91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General, states: “Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: (c) An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.” The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s unsafe inflight operation of the airplane and failure to maintain clearance from a person on the ground, which resulted in a serious injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA259
- Event ID
- 20230710192574
- Case number
- WPR23LA259
- 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: ebe706b14864024057b49d277ad3f54580a7746300728c8ddc73eac903840200; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:49:52.149Z.