MIA00LA130 · Scott VANS RV-4
Scott VANS RV-4 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Stennis International Airport (HSA) to Natchez–Adams County Airport / Hardy-Anders Field (HEZ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA130
- 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
- 0 · 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
Scott VANS RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Scott VANS RV-4
- 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
- N123SC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Stennis International Airport (HSA), Bay Saint Louis, MSTo Natchez–Adams County Airport / Hardy-Anders Field (HEZ)
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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; Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot told investigators that he and his friend were originally en route to Lakeland, Florida, when his airplane developed engine problems. He landed and over the next 3 days the engine was repaired. When his friend returned they both departed for Texas. They did not filed a flight plan, nor was a weather briefing obtained. About 105 nautical miles into the flight, they encountered fog and low ceilings. They performed a 180 degree turn and reversed directions. The pilot of N123SC, stated he lost control of the aircraft as he began his turn behind the lead aircraft. He tried to regain control of the airplane, but all control inputs failed to control the aircraft. The next thing he saw, was the trees and ground coming up towards him. Examination of the wreckage revealed, the control stick was actuated fore and aft, left and right with positive input to all control surfaces that were still intact on the aircraft. It was the opinion of the FAA inspector, '...that weather, fog, low ceilings, lack of instrumentation and the pilot flying in marginally VFR to IFR weather without an instrument rating, possibly contributed to a loss of control, secondarily to some buffeting by the lead aircraft, and then possibly an accelerated stall. The reported weather at Natchez-Adams Airport (HEZ), located about 15 miles west of the crash site was: lowest ceiling: 200 overcast, visibility: 2 1/2 miles, temperature 63 degrees F, dew point: 63 degrees F, wind from 020 degrees, at 6 knots, and the altimeter 30.16 inHg.
Probable cause
an inadvertent stall at too low altitude to allow recovery. Factors in this accident were fog and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA130
- Event ID
- 20001212X20877
- Case number
- MIA00LA130
- 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: f6197cf15d0b2ae819b0754a5836afedd2e2a529c78f38f16b78c12549b167e1; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:15:50.598Z.