ERA24FA395 · Evolution Aircraft Inc REVO
Evolution Aircraft Inc REVO · Accident en route
From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24FA395
- 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
- 2 · 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
Evolution Aircraft Inc REVO
- Aircraft type
- Evolution REVO
- Category
- Weight-Shift
- 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
- N889HT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH), Zephyrhills, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2015)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 structures
- 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 accident occurred during an instructional flight in a weight-shift-control aircraft. A witness reported hearing a popping sound and then saw the aircraft descending in a nose-down attitude with what he thought were flames coming from the aircraft. The aircraft continued to descend and impacted on the terrain. An airport security video captured the aircraft in a nose-down attitude with the wings folded back as it descended. The video showed that in the early morning, low light conditions, the aircraft’s position lights were on. This was likely what the witness thought was flames coming from the aircraft. Postaccident examination of the wreckage confirmed that there was no evidence of an inflight fire; however, a postimpact fire consumed most of the wreckage. The examination also found that the flight control cables were all connected to their respective connections. The haul back cable was found disconnected at the “J” hook, and the “J” hook was otherwise intact. The haul back cable allowed the wings to be folded for transport and storage of the aircraft. An inflight disconnection would have allowed the wings to fold back during flight. Based on this information, it is likely that the flight instructor did not secure the end of the haul back cable into the “J” hook prior to departing and the haul back cable detached during flight, which allowed the wings to fold up.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to ensure the haul back cable was securely connected to the “J” hook prior to departing on the accident flight, which resulted in the cable becoming disconnected and the wings folding up during flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24FA395
- Event ID
- 20240925195191
- Case number
- ERA24FA395
- 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: ed0b3bcc546fb60e2ed298e997ccc0183d213da244f031c5c13ecbd08ddf9006; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:58:27.703Z.