DFW06CA212 · Vans Aircraft RV4
Vans Aircraft RV4 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Springtown, TX to Crandbury, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA212
- 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
- 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
Vans Aircraft RV4
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV4
- 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
- N7LC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springtown, TXTo Crandbury, TX
- 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 14,498-hour private pilot experienced a loss of engine power shortly after takeoff from the 2,400-foot long, by 20-foot wide airstrip. The pilot elected to make a 180-degree turn back to the airstrip; however, the single-engine homebuilt airplane landed short of the runway. The pilot reported that he conducted a preflight prior to his departure and reported having 8 gallons of fuel aboard the airplane for the local flight to his intended destination. The pilot added that while climbing out on runway heading "the engine quit and he was unable to restart it after switching fuel tanks." At the time of the attempted restart the airplane was about 3/4 of a mile from the departure end of the airport at approximately 400 feet above the ground. The pilot further stated that after determining that there was no suitable forced landing areas ahead of the flight path, he elected to turn back toward the airport. The airplane was unable to reach the departure end of runway 34. During the forced landing, the airplane collided with a pipe fence and came to rest in the upright position approximately 40 feet inside of the airport property. The reason for the reported loss of engine power could not be determined. The weather at the airport was reported as 10 miles visibility with winds from 180 degrees at 12 knots. The airplane sustained structural damage.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA212
- Event ID
- 20061010X01492
- Case number
- DFW06CA212
- 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: fe406c22ce066247c6bf01eb7cdd75e95cb6fdafc67cceaa8da77fd4b44d1cef; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:40:42.015Z.