WPR24LA189 · Pipistrel Italia S R L ALPHA TRAINER
Pipistrel Italia S R L ALPHA TRAINER · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA189
- 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
Pipistrel Italia S R L ALPHA TRAINER
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel Italia ALPHA TRAINER
- 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
- N208ZM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8), Coalinga, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2018)
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 he entered the traffic pattern for runway 04 and had previously received information by email from ground personnel, that the wind was from the south at 4 kts. While on final approach, the pilot initiated a forward slip to assist with the airplane’s descent and he terminated the slip, the stall warning horn sounded. After the stall warning horn sounded, the airplane “lost lift and had no control” as it descended into a vineyard located to the left of the runway. The airplane impacted the ground, rotated 180°, and came to rest upright. The wings, fuselage, and empennage sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack that resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent loss of control on final approach. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to land with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA189
- Event ID
- 20240610194434
- Case number
- WPR24LA189
- 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: 428ac23bb6f799caf6f67ea8e5fea86dce28800e43561ecdaebde14ba2c3a523; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:52:24.736Z.