CHI97FA248 · Valley Adventurers, Inc. ADVENTURER 333 ADVENTURER
Valley Adventurers, Inc. ADVENTURER 333 ADVENTURER · Accident: airframe, component or system failure
From Wittman Regional Airport (OSH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA248
- 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
Valley Adventurers, Inc. ADVENTURER 333 ADVENTURER
- Aircraft type
- Valley Adventurers ADVENTURER 333
- 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
- N323VA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WITo 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Horizontal stabilizer attachment › Debonded
- Kit manufacturer › Inadequate quality control
- Kit manufacturer › Material inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had been on display at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about 14 miles north of the accident site, for several days prior to the accident flight. It was determined that no flights of the airplane had occurred in the intervening period between the arrival at Oshkosh and the accident flight. The flight initiated on the day of the accident was for the purpose of returning the airplane to Arkansas. While in-flight, the airplane suffered the loss of the horizontal stabilizer, elevator, rudder, both wings, and a portion of the vertical stabilizer. Subsequent to the accident an examination of the structure revealed insufficient material attaching the horizontal stabilizer to the vertical stabilizer. An examination of six other similar airplanes under construction found evidence of a lack of quality controls in manufacturing, technique, failure to follow published construction manuals and guidelines, and general oversight by the kit supplier/manufacturer. The kits were supplied and/or manufactured by single manufacturer.
Probable cause
The kit manufacturer's use of inadequate material in construction of the airplane, his inadequate application of quality controls resulting in the debonding of the horizontal stabilizer. Factors were the total loss of the horizontal stabilizer, the elevator, the rudder, both wings, and a partial loss of the vertical stabilizer, and wing struts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA248
- Event ID
- 20001208X08564
- Case number
- CHI97FA248
- 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: d8677a2f04caf4b9934cf37d910e6cbd6aff88cb7b34463ff6b1a3b97007250a; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:52:04.351Z.