CHI01LA008 · Walton RV-6
Walton RV-6 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From 21D to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA008
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Walton RV-6
- Aircraft type
- Walton RV-6
- 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
- N796W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 21DTo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, rudder control › Failure
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not possible
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage on impact with terrain during a landing. The pilot was uninjured. The pilot stated, "... Went out to do a few landings and after rounding out and 3 ft. above runway, my right rudder pedal failed causing my airplane to yaw left, strike left wingtip and cartwheel approx. 3 times before coming to rest on its gear." An on-scene examination revealed the right rudder pedal was separated from its cross tube. The airplane's condition inspection was performed on January 21, 2000. No entries indicating the compliance with SB 99-6-1 were found. A kit manufacturer's representative stated, "I researched the method by which we distribute service bulletins and, with each bulletin, we do a direct mailing to each customer, publish the SB in the newsletter and place it on our web site. If we are notified of change of ownership, we mail to the new owner. ... The SB would have gone to [the builder]." The builder stated, "I did not receive such bulletin. Had I, I certainly would have forwarded it to [the current owner]."
Probable cause
The rudder tube failure, and aircraft control not possible during the flare by the pilot. A factor was the service bulletin not being complied with by the mechanic during the condition inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA008
- Event ID
- 20001215X45418
- Case number
- CHI01LA008
- 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: 52ddb11bb03d6ac8e1ecd4a72301dd69954d22c85eea44ca89f7f008f2ecf338; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:23:28.433Z.