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Atlas / NTSB / WPR25LA149

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR25LA149

2025-05-02 Mojave, California, United States Airport · KMHV None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N538EE

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

AMERICAN CHAMPION AIRCRAFT 8KCAB

Year of manufacture

2022 · 3 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING AEIO-360-H1B (180 hp)

Seats / Engines

1 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20221109

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A6CE8E

Registrant of record

LIGHT SPEED AIR LLC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during climb out from an aborted landing.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that after landing in the tailwheel equipped airplane, he was having difficulty maintaining the runway centerline. He therefore decided to abort the landing and added power. During takeoff, he noticed the airplane had difficulty climbing and was drifting off the runway heading. Subsequently, he turned back toward the runway and subsequently the airplane when into a stall and impacted nose down. During the accident sequence, substantial damage was sustained to the wings. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact failures or malfunctions of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. 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).

  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Angle of attack-Capability exceeded
  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Temp/humidity/pressure-High density altitude-Effect on equipment

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2025_WPR25LA149.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 ↗