FTW98FA145 · DUCI'S Vans RV-3
DUCI'S Vans RV-3 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Kelly Air Park (CO15) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA145
- 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
DUCI'S Vans RV-3
- Aircraft type
- Duci's Vans 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
- N99HV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kelly Air Park (CO15), COTo 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 › Aerobatics, initiated
- Wing, spar › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness said the pilot was performing aerobatics, and while maneuvering, the aircraft (acft) went into a nose high attitude as if it was coming to the top of a loop. He said one of the wings suddenly 'folded' up, and 'It looked as if it had bent at the connection between the wing and the fuselage. . . .' The acft then entered an uncontrolled descent & crashed. Metallurgical exam of the right wing revealed overload fractures in the lower & upper main spar caps, which were indicative of upward failure; initial fracture was in the lower cap area. Twisting & upward bending of the main upper spar cap was noted, as well as 'overstress separation.' Five bolt holes were found at the inboard portion of the upper & lower main spar caps with no respective bolts or remnants of such bolts. No deformation or distortion of any of the bolt holes was noted, but circular markings were noted on the forward side of both outboard holes, & similar indications were noted on the aft side of 2 other holes in the lower main spar cap. The investigation did not determine whether the missing bolts had failed & separated during the breakup, or if they had not been reinstalled during previous maintenance/modification. All rivets in both the upper & lower main spar caps were broken through the shanks 'consistent with direct shear separations. No evidence of cracking or breaking of rivet heads . . . was noted.' This was 1 of 3 RV-3s built by Tony Duci & the 2nd to structurally fail in flight. Acft had been modified as an RV-3A, but had not been re-certified as such. Aerobatic gross weight limit (1,050 lbs) had been exceeded by an estimated 120 lbs.
Probable cause
in-flight failure of the right wing spar (for an undetermined reason) as the pilot was performing aerobatic flight. The airplane's excessive gross weight (for aerobatics) was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA145
- Event ID
- 20001211X09658
- Case number
- FTW98FA145
- 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: 09d0b7619a1962952cb27b67f047eb170386a069e69e44bc37bd26ad0964d25d; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:39:47.009Z.