NYC08LA001 · Lambert John G Varieze
Lambert John G Varieze · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK) to CPK
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA001
- 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
Lambert John G Varieze
- Aircraft type
- Lambert John VARIEZE
- 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
- N8VE
- Operator
- Jefrey M. Arnold · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Chesapeake, VATo CPK
- 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 downwind
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner's girlfriend stated that the purpose of the flight was to test the speed brake installed in the amateur-built airplane. She quoted the pilot as saying that during the first hour he owned the airplane, he tried the speed brake and it really scared him. He had since accumulated 70 total hours in the airplane and was going to try the speed brake again. Witnesses described watching the accident airplane taxi from its hangar and then listening to the pilot announce the takeoff, crosswind, and downwind legs of the traffic pattern over the Unicom frequency. Seconds later, the witnesses heard a voice transmit cries for help. Other witnesses were traveling southbound along a divided highway, adjacent to the airport, in their car. They noticed the airplane flying erratically, at low altitude, as it paralleled their course on the west side of the highway. The airplane then crossed the roadway in front of their vehicle at low altitude, and circled back towards them before striking the ground on the east side of the roadway, scattering debris across all four lanes in a westerly direction. The witnesses' vehicle drove through and over wreckage as their vehicle was struck by flying debris. Examination of the wreckage and its components revealed no evidence of preimpact anomalies. The airplane's builder assisted the pilot/owner with a complete disassembly and annual inspection of the airplane about 1 year prior to the accident, with no mechanical, performance, or handling deficiencies noted with the speed brake stowed or deployed. The pilot/owner did not express any concerns to the builder about the speed brake, nor the handling characteristics of the airplane with the speed brake deployed.
Probable cause
A loss of control in flight for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA001
- Event ID
- 20071016X01587
- Case number
- NYC08LA001
- 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. 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: dd8596a1596def98d048efa780dca620594195626a19d8504936ffbd2b513ec3; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:14:25.758Z.