WPR24LA085 · Evektor-Aerotechnik A S HARMONY LSA
Sunrise Aviation Evektor-Aerotechnik A S HARMONY LSA · Accident: aircraft wake turbulence encounter during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA085
- 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
Evektor-Aerotechnik A S HARMONY LSA
- Aircraft type
- Evektor HARMONY
- 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
- N377YG
- Operator
- Sunrise Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2020)
- 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
- 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 wake turbulence encounter
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 light sport airplane (LSA) was on a day, visual flight rules approach to runway 20L when the tower controller cautioned the student pilot of possible wake turbulence from an airliner that was on approach to land on parallel runway 20R just ahead of the LSA. The student pilot in the LSA acknowledged the caution and continued the approach to land. About 40 ft above ground level (agl) and about 450 ft from the runway threshold, the accident airplane entered a rapid right roll, subsequently impacting the ground. Surveillance video of the accident showed that about 49 seconds before the accident, a narrow-body airliner made an approach and landed on runway 20R. The lateral distance between runway 20R and 20L was about 390 ft. The video then showed the LSA approach the runway 20L threshold and enter an uncommanded right roll. The prevailing wind about the time of the accident was 3 knots from 240°. The wake vortex generated by the landing airliner likely drifted to the parallel runway with the southwesterly wind, where it was subsequently encountered by the accident airplane as it approached runway 20L. FAA Advisory Circular (AC) 90-23G, section 11, noted that, when landing behind a larger aircraft on a parallel runway closer than 2,500 ft apart and considering the relationship between the runway threshold locations, the relative glideslope descent paths and possible vortex drift will likely prevent wake turbulence accidents of this nature. As the AC states, “The pilot should exercise vortex visualization and avoidance procedures using the same degree of awareness as in collision avoidance.” The pilot should have, as the AC states, established a glidepath to a touchdown point that was “above and beyond the touchdown point of the larger preceding aircraft.” Landing beyond the touchdown point of the larger preceding airplane would likely have averted the light sport airplane’s encounter with wake turbulence.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control due to wake turbulence resulting from the instructor pilot’s decision to continue the landing into a drifting wake vortex.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA085
- Event ID
- 20240212193780
- Case number
- WPR24LA085
- 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: 6faef6eac8995156b0f294fc0d748cb29bda6fc7d7ff97435fb670dd676d1965; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:30:13.765Z.