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WPR21LA222

2021-05-15 · Las Vegas, Nevada, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport HND

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The flight instructor’s failure to compensate for a downdraft during takeoff, which resulted in a loss of control and collision with terrain.

Factual narrative

The flight instructor reported that, they configured the airplane for takeoff and noted there was a substantial crosswind. During takeoff, as the airplane reached about 50 ft above ground level (agl), the airplane encountered a downdraft, and the flight instructor was unable to maintain altitude. The airplane descended and collided in the ditch located between the parallel runways. The airplane wing tips contacted the ground and the airplane spun around coming to rest in the opposite direction of travel. The right wing was substantially damaged. The flight instructor reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.

  • — Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Instructor/check pilot
  • — Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Downdraft-Response/compensation

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_WPR21LA222.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Search this event elsewhere

External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.

Related research

Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (loss of control). All research papers