DEN03FA111 · Hammond Vans RV-6A
Hammond Vans RV-6A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From La Junta Municipal Airport (LHX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03FA111
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Hammond Vans RV-6A
- Aircraft type
- Hammond VANS RV-6A
- 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
- N199LH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Junta Municipal Airport (LHX), La Junta, COTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot arrived at the airport at 0900, taxied to the runway at 0910, and took off at 0922. At 0929, he contacted AFSS, reported his position as being 13 nautical miles west of the airport, and requested the area weather. He was given the current area METAR and an AIRMET for turbulence. At 0930, the pilot reported that he was 10 nautical miles north of the airport and filed a PIREP. A witness later thought he saw the airplane fly over the runway in an easterly direction. Another witness saw the airplane in the traffic pattern doing touch-and-go landings. When the pilot failed to return home that evening, airport personnel were notified. The wreckage was found 0.5 miles east of the airport. The airplane came to rest in a vertical position. The propeller blades were twisted rearward and chord wise scratches were on camber surfaces. The investigation revealed that in 2000, the pilot had been involved in a ground loop accident with the airplane. After taking delivery of the repaired airplane, the pilot had complained that the controls didn't seem as if they were adjusted properly, and he had once scared himself while practicing stalls. An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies which contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed resulting in a stall during the turn from base leg to final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03FA111
- Event ID
- 20030701X00974
- Case number
- DEN03FA111
- 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, coordinates. 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: 743e87ae61a1060d39f4c53587131e6d39aefb65cf67f70df0430a1b5eabfa8f; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:07:59.438Z.