WPR23FA286 · Risen 915 iS
Risen 915 iS · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23FA286
- 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
- 0
- 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
Risen 915 iS
- Aircraft type
- Risen 915
- 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
- N2442
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2023)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight in his experimental, amateur-built airplane, and the accident occurred on day nine of the flight. The airport manager at the departure airport reported that he assisted the pilot with fueling the airplane with about 15 gallons of fuel. He reported that the engine sounded like it was at full power during takeoff; however, the airplane appeared to climb slower than he expected to about 300-400 ft above ground level (agl). The main landing gear were up but the nose gear appeared to be partially extended and had not completely retracted. He watched the airplane maintain a low altitude at a low airspeed until he observed a “wing drop,” and the airplane subsequently made two turns in a “flat spin” with about a 45-60° nose-down attitude as it descended behind terrain. Postaccident examination revealed no anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. Damage signatures and witness accounts indicated that the engine was producing power at the time of the accident. The debris path was consistent with a steep impact angle. Evidence suggests that the pilot failed to maintain airspeed during the climb, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall/spin. The pilot had texted the aircraft kit manufacturer that he was having problems with the engine overheating; however, had made modifications to the cooling system that appeared to be successful, according to his texts with the owner of a similar airplane. The airplane’s emergency parachute was found deployed at the accident site. Since the parachute was unfurled, it is likely that the parachute deployment was the result of ground contact. Evidence suggests that the pilot failed to maintain airspeed during the climb, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall/spin. The nose landing gear did not retract fully after takeoff. Although this may have created a distraction for the pilot that resulted in a loss of airspeed while he was troubleshooting the nose landing gear retraction, the investigation was not able to determine the reason for the pilot’s loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23FA286
- Event ID
- 20230728192733
- Case number
- WPR23FA286
- 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, coordinates, 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: 89957c9892908f1a372e6342a745f7ade846f62d8dc131790f62e38c833ccb2a; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:03:37.806Z.