ERA26FA110 · Pipistrel TAURUS 503
Pipistrel TAURUS 503 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26FA110
- 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 TAURUS 503
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel TAURUS 503
- 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
- N414HG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 February 9, 2026, about 1514 eastern standard time, a Pipistrel Taurus 503 motorglider, N414HG, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident at Willis Gliderport (FA44), Boynton Beach, Florida. The pilot was seriously injured. The motorglider was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.
Video with audio from a Ring camera captured the motorglider taxiing to the west end of the gliderport where it stopped facing east with the engine running for about 2 minutes and 10 seconds. The audio captured the sound of the engine rpm increasing followed by the motorglider beginning the takeoff roll. The video captured the motorglider rotating about 570 ft down the runway, the motorglider exited the camera’s field of view but the audio continued to record.
A pilot rated witness located inside his residence on the north side of the gliderport about 1,900 ft east of the western edge of the runway reported hearing the motorglider depart. When the motorglider was past his house he heard the engine quit. He went outside and observed it flying in a westerly direction about 350 ft south of the runway at an altitude of between 200 and 300 ft. He noted the engine was extended but was not running. The motorglider continued to the west a “few hundred feet” before banking to the right; the right wing dropped, and the glider descended in a nose-low attitude while rotating to the right. The motorglider impacted the ground in a near vertical position and fell back, coming to rest upright.
Postaccident examination of the motorglider which was equipped with an airframe rescue parachute revealed it was not deployed and a safety pin was in the emergency parachute release handle.
The wreckage was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26FA110
- Event ID
- 20260210202421
- Case number
- ERA26FA110
- 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: 543d638011cd5e42a55261c4ad1f41e3d2a7bdf1cef6376ff0a0cb49b8030ba9; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:44:28.448Z.