CHI04FA215 · Jorgensen Velocity XL-RG
Jorgensen Velocity XL-RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dodge City Regional Airport (DDC) to Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04FA215
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Jorgensen Velocity XL-RG
- Aircraft type
- Jorgensen VELOCITY XL-RG
- 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
- N190J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dodge City Regional Airport (DDC), Dodge City, KSTo Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB), Melbourne, FL
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Stall/spin
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The amateur-built airplane was destroyed by a post-accident fire following an in-flight breakup and subsequent explosion during cruise flight. The non-instrument rated pilot called for a weather briefing and was told that an instrument flight rules advisory was issued for the one-western third of Kansas and that the departure airport was currently reporting marginal visual flight rules weather conditions. The pilot did not file a flight plan during the weather briefing. At the time of departure, the airport's weather observation system reported an overcast ceiling of 900 feet and a surface visibility of 5 statute miles with mist. Combining aircraft radar track data with several weather products indicated that the accident airplane was operating within an overcast cloud layer prior to the accident. Just prior to the accident, aircraft radar track data showed the airplane in a climbing left turn, followed by a descending left turn that continued until the last radar return at 5,700 feet msl. The calculated average descent rate was 2,000 feet/min between the last two radar returns. The last radar return was 0.64 nm northeast of the accident site. A witness to the accident reported hearing an airplane overhead, which was followed by an increase in engine noise. The witness stated he "looked up and saw the plane fall out of the clouds in [an] inverted flat spin, the wing broke off, then the plane burst into flames [and] fell straight to the ground." No anomalies consistent with a preexisting condition were observed during the post-accident examination of the airframe and engine.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot's VFR flight into known instrument meteorological conditions and his failure to maintain aircraft control which resulted in an inverted flat spin, in-flight breakup, and explosion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04FA215
- Event ID
- 20040825X01289
- Case number
- CHI04FA215
- 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: f256930d2bc864d39a76fb164033eb8fd8282119208a138d5c060d0fed829688; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:23:19.182Z.