WPR25LA291 · Pipistrel D O O ALPHA TRAINER
Mesa Pilot Development Pipistrel D O O ALPHA TRAINER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA291
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Pipistrel D O O ALPHA TRAINER
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel 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
- N246EA
- Operator
- Mesa Pilot Development
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2023)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 25, 2025, at about 0653 mountain daylight time, a Pipistrel D O O Alpha Trainer, N246EA, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Wittman, Arizona. The two pilots on board received minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilots, while in cruise flight at an altitude of 6,500 ft msl, the engine suddenly experienced a total loss of power, and the propeller stopped rotating. The pilots attempted to restart the engine, but the propeller would not rotate when the starter was engaged, and they were unable to restore engine power. The pilots then prepared for a forced landing and turned the airplane toward an oval-shaped car test track. As the airplane approached the test track, the pilots realized the sloped surface of the test track made it unsuitable to land on, and they turned the airplane toward flat desert terrain north of the track. During landing, the nose landing gear dug into the dirt, and the airplane nosed over, coming to rest inverted. As a result, the airplane sustained substantial damage to its empennage. The wreckage was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA291
- Event ID
- 20250925201717
- Case number
- WPR25LA291
- 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. 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: cc4d16baad9b4ca65dbf2d65ad0e4910852b086f9b71b17210f89a8ee4f284d2; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:22:59.222Z.