WPR26LA123 · Brunner Donald G KITFOX
Brunner Donald G KITFOX · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
From St George Regional Airport (SGU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA123
- 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
Brunner Donald G KITFOX
- Aircraft type
- Brunner Donald KITFOX
- 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
- N104DG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St George Regional Airport (SGU), Saint George, UTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1995)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was maneuvering at a low altitude, searching for a suitable off-airport landing area. While in a left turn, the airplane encountered a downdraft that felt like “downward pressure” and was perceived as a loss of control. The pilot leveled the wings and applied full engine power; however, the airplane continued to descend, and impacted terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, both wings, and empennage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies prior to the accident that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
An encounter with a downdraft while maneuvering at a low altitude, which resulted in an impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA123
- Event ID
- 20260310202631
- Case number
- WPR26LA123
- 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 2026-03-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6a1031c16d6b8bc84e626ee2f1ebcbb6f532d6772d552840e6db8b00a5b9270b; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:57:30.479Z.