CEN23LA424 · Powrachute PEGASUS
Powrachute PEGASUS · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA424
- 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
- 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
Powrachute PEGASUS
- Aircraft type
- Powrachute PEGASUS
- Category
- Powered Parachute
- 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
- N31520
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- 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 reported that there were no anomalies during his preflight inspection of the powered parachute. During the rolling preflight, he observed the wing was inflated overhead and he did not notice any anomalies with the wing or the control lines. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot experienced an uncontrolled left turn. He subsequently executed a landing near an airport hangar and impacted a parked trailer during the landing roll. The passenger reported to a law enforcement officer that after takeoff the pilot stated that there was a problem and that the parachute was tangled. Postaccident examination revealed the powered parachute’s tubular frame was fractured. The wing’s control lines and risers were attached to their respective mounting locations and flight control continuity was established from the airframe to the wing. Based on the available information, it is likely that during the inflation and takeoff roll the pilot failed to notice a pressure knot (a tangle or knot held together by tension on the suspension lines during deployment but not otherwise present) or a line-over (a malfunction where a suspension line is misrouted over the canopy), which resulted in an uncommanded steep turn and loss of directional control after departure.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate rolling preflight, which resulted in a loss of directional control in flight and subsequent collision with an object during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA424
- Event ID
- 20231002193174
- Case number
- CEN23LA424
- 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: 4f83a61f1a30a0f58251cd7f092bfa35cc2d838feead4b025ba9cc19110f2836; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:11:00.701Z.