LAX98FA305 · O'NEIL VAN'S RV-3
O'NEIL VAN'S RV-3 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Redding Municipal Airport (RDD) to Castle Airport (MER)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA305
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
O'NEIL VAN'S RV-3
- Aircraft type
- O'neil VAN S 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
- N244WW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Redding Municipal Airport (RDD), Redding, CATo Castle Airport (MER), Atwater, CA
- 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
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness heard an aircraft fly overhead but was unable to see it due to low clouds and misting precipitation. Another witness saw the airplane break out of the bottom of the overcast, accompanied by increased engine sounds and falling parts, which had separated from the aircraft. He estimated the ceiling to be about 400 feet above ground level. The aircraft was not equipped for IFR flight and the pilot did not possess an instrument rating. The right wing separated from the aircraft and was located approximately 100 feet from the main wreckage. The empennage section also separated from the fuselage, and, the horizontal and vertical stabilizers had separated from the empennage. Examination of the wreckage disclosed that the fracture surfaces exhibited overload characteristics, and no preimpact malfunctions or failures were found with the control system. The pilot's toxicological results were positive for quinine. The side effects of quinine can include disturbances of vision, hearing, and balance. Disturbances of balance have been noted even at low doses, and the use of quinine by pilots is usually contraindicated, as it may contribute to spatial disorientation under some conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempt to continue VFR flight in instrument conditions, which led to his spatial disorientation and in-flight loss of aircraft control, and, resulted in a pilot-induced overload failure of the airframe. The pilot's use of quinine may have been a factor in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA305
- Event ID
- 20001211X11088
- Case number
- LAX98FA305
- 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: 4405380d42b1b8fddb857a4ee1e3edec6a382eb9bb1be61b5d8beabf10c6ddd3; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:23:42.612Z.