SEA97LA013 · Keith VANS RV-6A
Keith VANS RV-6A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Grassy Meadows/Sky Ranch Landowners Assn Airport (UT47) to Mesa Gateway Airport (IWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA013
- 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
- 2 · 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
Keith VANS RV-6A
- Aircraft type
- Keith VANS RV-6A
- 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
- N16DK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grassy Meadows/Sky Ranch Landowners Assn Airport (UT47)To Mesa Gateway Airport (IWA), Phoenix, AZ
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off in dark night conditions. The private airport's pilot-controlled runway lighting controller was malfunctioning at the time, and this had been reported to airport users. The runway lights could be turned on manually upon request, but the president of the airport landowners association reported that the pilot did not request the lights to be turned on for the accident flight. He was current for night flight according to Federal Aviation Regulations, but had not flown at night for almost two months and had logged only 15.2 hours of total night flight time. A witness reported that the aircraft became airborne, and that about two minutes later there was a very loud 'thud' at which point the engine noise ceased. Investigators who responded to the accident scene found no evidence of aircraft or engine malfunction, and photographed the airplane's vertical speed indicator captured at a 1,900 foot per minute descent rate indication. Toxicology tests on the pilot detected 0.094 ug/ml diphenhydramine (Benadryl), a sedating antihistamine, in the pilot's blood, 0.152 ug/ml diphenhydramine in liver fluid, and 33.400 ug/ml acetaminophen (Tylenol) in lung fluid.
Probable cause
the pilot's impairment of judgment and performance due to drugs (diphenhydramine) which led to spatial disorientation and loss of aircraft control. Contributing to the accident were: dark night lighting conditions; inoperative airport runway lights; the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation; and the pilot's lack of total experience in night flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA013
- Event ID
- 20001208X06978
- Case number
- SEA97LA013
- 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: a71d6e2f7c9d72fd549fc5605631d8417b8177e3b7663e4573b08f46f05c37fb; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:10:11.177Z.