NYC08CA126 · Morrison Vans RV-8
Morrison Vans RV-8 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA126
- 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
Morrison Vans RV-8
- Aircraft type
- Morrison VANS RV-8
- 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
- N781RV
- Operator
- James Corley
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Port Orange, FLTo 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
- Landing · landing roll
- Defining eventThe 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 on ground
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the amateur-built Vans RV-8 landed the tail dragger airplane at his home airport with a 200-pound passenger in the rear seat, but with the center of gravity within limits. Winds were 60 to 70 degrees from the right, at 15, gusting to 20 knots. The pilot elected to use "half flaps" due to the winds, and the airplane touched down at 85 to 90 miles per hour behind a protective row of condominiums and trees. Upon emerging from behind the protective row, the airplane was "suddenly" hit with a strong wind gust that turned it 45 degrees to the right, toward a tree and hangars about 30 yards beyond the tree. The pilot applied left rudder and left brake, but was unable to turn the airplane. The airplane continued off the runway, into a cable barricade and ground looped, resulting in substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage. The pilot noted that there was a skid mark from the left tire at least 120 feet long, and that he would have been unable to abort the landing from where he lost control.
Probable cause
The airplane's inadvertent encounter with a crosswind gust during the landing roll, which resulted in the pilot's loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA126
- Event ID
- 20080417X00506
- Case number
- NYC08CA126
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: c9489eb19a16a6bf3c36c458f05c5367bc9ce6a880555f63dfb96654b5e03c44; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:33:11.961Z.