LAX07LA022 · Fish Vans RV-6
Fish Vans RV-6 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Turlock Municipal Airport (O15) to O15
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA022
- 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
Fish Vans RV-6
- Aircraft type
- Fish 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
- N1198N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Turlock Municipal Airport (O15), Turlock, CATo O15
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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/mush
- 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
- Engine assembly, ring › Fractured
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, encountered
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 experienced a partial loss of engine power and collided with the ground during the pilot's attemp to return to the departure runway. After reaching about 500 feet above ground level (agl) in the takeoff initial climb, the pilot noted a loss of engine revolutions per minute (rpm) and a decrease in airspeed. He maneuvered the airplane in a 180-degree turn in an attempt to return to the runway. The airplane stalled and the pilot attempted to recover. The airplane entered an accelerated stall again and descended rapidly. Upon impact, the airplane touched down hard, subsequently nosing over and coming to rest inverted. The pilot performed a post-accident examination of the engine and discovered that both spark plugs in the no. 4 cylinder were oil fouled. Additional investigation found that two of the rings on the number four piston were broken, allowing oil to move past the piston into the combustion chamber.
Probable cause
a partial loss of engine power due to the broken piston rings in the no. 4 cylinder. Also causal was the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering for a forced landing, which resulted in a stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA022
- Event ID
- 20061114X01655
- Case number
- LAX07LA022
- 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: 9909e56f8baadd7828e3e49b21fd832973a799c1619f9643c0750261c474eba0; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:53:13.398Z.