WPR26LA104 · Aerosport Ltd IKARUS C42E
Aerosport Ltd IKARUS C42E · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Wendover Airport (ENV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA104
- 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
Aerosport Ltd IKARUS C42E
- Aircraft type
- Aerosport IKARUS C42E
- 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
- N420MS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wendover Airport (ENV), Wendover, UTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- 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 during a personal flight at dusk, he descended to get a closer look at the sunset reflecting off the water on the salt flats. Afterwards, he performed a chandelle maneuver to reverse course and depart the area. He initiated the maneuver by adding full power, banked left and established a climb. At the apex of the climbing left turn, the airspeed decreased and he lowered the nose to regain airspeed. The pilot stated that they were very quickly in a nose down dive, and due to the low altitude, he had little time to troubleshoot and recover. Subsequently, the airplane landed in a flat attitude, which resulted in substantial damage to the aluminum main cross beam landing gear attachment point structure. The pilot added that at some point during the maneuver, power was accidentally reduced and he didn’t notice. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s mismanagement of engine power during a maximum performance, 180° climbing left turn at a low altitude that resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA104
- Event ID
- 20260217202447
- Case number
- WPR26LA104
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-02-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f500074db5fbf39278559a50368fe410cd5a462b019751d314844355f183ec30; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:46:45.428Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The city slot holds the airport name; ENV is Wendover Airport, whose city is Wendover, UT, as the location field records.