WPR25LA278 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40 · Accident while maneuvering
From Spanish Fork Municipal Airport/Woodhouse Field (SPK) to J. Randy McKnight Nephi Municipal Airport (U14)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA278
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-40
- 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
- N8VT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spanish Fork Municipal Airport/Woodhouse Field (SPK), Spanish Fork, UTTo J. Randy McKnight Nephi Municipal Airport (U14), Nephi, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting a night visual flight rules training flight, which included a recovery from an unusual attitude. During the recovery maneuver, the student pilot became concerned about the airplane’s proximity to mountainous terrain. The flight instructor and student pilot then both focused their attention on the multi-function display (MFD) to confirm their position. While both pilots were observing the MFD the airplane entered a decent, which the instructor and student pilot both failed to notice until the terrain was illuminated by the landing light. The flight instructor then took control of the airplane; however, the airplane contacted the ground, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and separation of the empennage. The flight instructor reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate supervision and delayed remedial action during an unusual attitude recovery, which resulted in a descent into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA278
- Event ID
- 20250916201012
- Case number
- WPR25LA278
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-09-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3e4ad0a31a4fe09b2bfe62d8625ceb2c4e826aac95ed573b5e6e9f1044389af4; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:20:47.586Z.