SEA96LA005 · Chard RV-3A
Chard RV-3A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From 10R3 · North Plains, OR to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA005
- 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
Chard RV-3A
- Aircraft type
- Chard RV-3
- 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
- N27RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 10R3 · North Plains, ORTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Wing, spar › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the RV-3 initiated a steeply banked right turn, after following another aircraft in a rapid climbing maneuver. During this turn, which was described by witnesses on the ground as extremely tight, the right wing was seen to separate from the fuselage. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the front wing spar had failed just outboard of its attach fitting, and the rear spar and rear spar doubler plate experienced a overstress separation through the attach bolt hole. The recording accelerometer found in the wreckage was indicating .2 G's more than the 9 G ultimate load limit published by the designer of the RV-3 aircraft plans.
Probable cause
The pilot exceeded the design stress limit of the aircraft, followed by the failure of the right wing main spar.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA005
- Event ID
- 20001207X04790
- Case number
- SEA96LA005
- 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: f22284c4a630c40e9a4a38a33ed58e0a3ee910e149855aa1be789fe6a533a7a1; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:34:07.531Z.