FTW96FA009 · Rupe RV-4
Rupe RV-4 · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From 2V2 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA009
- 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
- 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
Rupe RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Rupe RV-4
- 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
- N61TR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2V2To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Propeller system/accessories › Unapproved part
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During flight the propeller failed shedding one blade approximately 15 inches from the hub. The aircraft was observed to pitch up and enter a flat spin to impact. The propeller installed on the aircraft was a cut-down metal propeller, and the aircraft specifications required that only wood propellers be used. The logs indicated a wood propeller was installed on the aircraft and no history of the metal propeller was found.
Probable cause
the installation of an unapproved metal propeller which led to a fatigue failure of a blade and loss of aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA009
- Event ID
- 20001207X04680
- Case number
- FTW96FA009
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0b3dffdf53dfcfcf2c3e5394f001a2754c97752ab3d6b51c249f7b8290d8ebf6; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:34:28.010Z.