CHI06LA071 · Villarubia RV-6
Villarubia RV-6 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Decatur, NE to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA071
- 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
Villarubia RV-6
- Aircraft type
- Villarubia 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
- N242EV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Decatur, NETo 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
- En route · descent
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the terrain in an open field. There were no known witnesses to the accident. The pilot's wife reported that she last saw him between 1120 and 1130 on the day of the accident. The pilot had told her that he was going to fly and that this was probably going to be his last flight in the airplane as he was preparing to sell the airplane. The pilot kept the airplane in a building on his farm and routinely used a gravel road near the farm for taking off and landing. One of the pilot's neighbors reported that he saw the pilot around 1130 in the building where he kept the airplane. He stated they waved to each other, but did not speak. This same neighbor found the wreckage in the field which was located about 1/2 mile from the pilot's farm. The airplane impacted the terrain in a nose down attitude and bounced about 15 feet prior to coming to rest. The propeller and left main gear were located at the initial point of impact with the terrain. The underside of the leading edges of both wings were crushed at a near 45-degree angle. Both fuel tanks were ruptured. Aileron, elevator, and rudder flight control continuity was established, however the rudder cables were bound up under the cockpit flooring due to impact damage. The propeller hub was separated from the engine and was buried approximately 12-inches deep in the ground at the initial impact site. Both blades were twisted and remained attached to the hub. Post accident inspection of the airplane and engine failed to reveal any failure/malfunction which would have resulted in the accident. The pilot was denied a medical certificate due to a history of malignant melanoma with metastasis. According to the pilot's wife he was recently informed that the cancer had spread and he had four to six months to live.
Probable cause
An inflight collision with the terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA071
- Event ID
- 20060126X00125
- Case number
- CHI06LA071
- 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: 8a0fe1e0daca092b5974dfdbcfd9a6a7f1846d8738b96c003266a551fd8a3e44; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:35:16.854Z.