DEN01LA034 · Barackman Vans RV-6
Barackman Vans RV-6 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to Dodge City Regional Airport (DDC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01LA034
- 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
Barackman Vans RV-6
- Aircraft type
- Barackman Vans 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
- N3891P
- Operator
- Neil L. Crotts · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NMTo Dodge City Regional Airport (DDC), Dodge City, KS
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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, wing flap control cable/rod › Failure, total
- Owner/builder › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the airplane made a full flap approach to the runway, the pilot 'felt a bump,' the right flap retracted, and the airplane rolled abruptly to the right. The pilot added full power and left aileron but it had no effect. The airplane drifted off the right side of the runway, dragging the wing tip, then cartwheeled and nosed into the ground. Postaccident inspection revealed the right hand flap rod (p/n F-659) had failed, causing a split flap condition. The failed actuator rod was made of aluminum tubing threaded at each end. The pilot said, 'Wall thickness at the threaded ends is thin,' and the part should be made of steel. Vans Aircraft, Inc., said 'the failure was associated with poor workmanship rather than materials defect or structural design...the original builder had not enlarged the hole required in the fuselage large enough to prevent the rod from 'scraping' during flap extension. The continued scraping had eventually worn away the entire side of the rod and resulted in total failure.'
Probable cause
Total failure of the right hand flap control rod due to construction procedures/directives not being followed by the builder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01LA034
- Event ID
- 20010105X00030
- Case number
- DEN01LA034
- 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: 895bc6ada2f2b54b73a4e0503ffd40af818e6f81566e6206a9e3824ea0bfeb54; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:15:59.087Z.