CHI98LA120 · Rodgers RAVEN
Rodgers RAVEN · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From SD11 · Clear Lake, SD to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA120
- 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
Rodgers RAVEN
- Aircraft type
- Rodgers RAVEN
- 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
- N17JR
- Operator
- Douglas C. Aamold · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From SD11 · Clear Lake, SDTo 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness said that he heard the airplane approach his farm from the north. 'The motor was pretty loud.' The airplane was traveling north to south at an altitude of approximately 100 feet above ground level (agl). The airplane came to a position due west of where the witness was standing, and made a flat turn. After the pilot completed the turn, the airplane lost altitude. 'It was in a flat attitude as it descended. It didn't seem like the nose [of the airplane] dipped down.' The witness said that he lost sight of the airplane when it went behind some trees. He said that he heard the airplane impact on the ground. Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies. The pilot told a witness, two weeks prior to the accident, that 'he only had about an hour's worth of flight time' in the airplane. Another witness said that the pilot might have flown the airplane the day before the accident, but it was more likely that he just did taxi tests. FAA toxicology testing of specimens from the pilot revealed volatile concentrations of bupropion in blood and liver samples.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall. A factor contributing to this accident was the pilot's lack of experience in the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA120
- Event ID
- 20001211X09817
- Case number
- CHI98LA120
- 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: e69cb0959fe4482e477b5c78e4b3aa139fbfffcf7ff283a93f532bd8fa6d65e3; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:37:53.571Z.