CEN26LA231 · Bailey-Moyes DRAGONFLY
Bailey-Moyes DRAGONFLY · Accident: glider tow event during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA231
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Bailey-Moyes DRAGONFLY
- Aircraft type
- Bailey Moyes DRAGONFLY
- 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
- N3849A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1999)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Glider tow event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
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 June 22, 2026, about 1915 central daylight time, a Bailey-Moyes Dragonfly, N3849A, was involved in an accident near Whitewater, Wisconsin. The pilot of the Dragonfly was not injured. The pilot of the hang glider in tow was fatally injured. The tow operation was conducted under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a glider tow flight. The Dragonfly, a tow plane with a hang glider in tow, took off and had reached an altitude of about 30 ft above the ground when the pilot of the tow plane felt something through the tow cable. When he looked back, he saw the hang glider pilot hanging from the base bar. The hang glider pilot fell to the ground and was fatally injured. The pilot of the tow plane released the glider, returned to the airport, and landed without further incident. The hang glider came to rest on airport property near the fallen pilot. An inspector from the Federal Aviation Administration examined the harness and carabiner used to attach the glider pilot and no obvious defects were found. The harness and carabiner were retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA231
- Event ID
- 20260622203218
- Case number
- CEN26LA231
- 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, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-06-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 970386074605dce30737d8fab3b9842e24bdf2d81abd6739317a26db67f67462; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:17:19.579Z.