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Atlas / NTSB / WPR22LA165

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR22LA165

2022-04-24 Eloy, Arizona, United States Airport · AZ04 Unknown 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N3694U

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

CESSNA 182G

Year of manufacture

1963 · 59 years old at event

Engine

CONT MOTOR O-470 SERIES (230 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20220120

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A430B2

Registrant of record

PARA TACTICS LLC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The unoccupied airplanes exceedance of the critical angle of attack which resulted in a stall, subsequent inverted spin, and impact with terrain.

Factual narrative

The accident airplane was part of an exhibition event, the goal of which was for two pilots to fly two similarly equipped airplanes in a vertical dive, after which they would simultaneously bail out and transfer to the other airplane. The pilot of one airplane was able to successfully transfer to the other airplane and land without incident, however, the other pilot could not enter the second airplane because it entered an inverted spin shortly after egress. The pilot reported that he believed the airplane entered a spin due to the ballast that was added to offset the weight of the safety pilot. He added that the airplane was outfitted with a parachute system that was designed to trigger at an altitude of 1,000 ft, and deployed while the airplane was inverted, which resulted in it only being partially deployed when the airplane impacted the ground and was substantially damaged. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Angle of attack-Capability exceeded

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2022_WPR22LA165.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗