NYC08FA239 · Jahns Vans RV-7
Jahns Vans RV-7 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM) to Muñoz Landing Airstrip (BLM)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08FA239
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Jahns Vans RV-7
- Aircraft type
- Jahns VANS RV-7
- 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
- N916R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM), Belmar, NJTo Muñoz Landing Airstrip (BLM)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 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
- Not determined › Not determined
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-owner of the amateur-built airplane completed an oil change and was seen performing other maintenance on his airplane. The airplane subsequently departed the uncontrolled airport at an unknown time, and was seen impacting an estuary, approximately 4 miles from the departure airport, after a near-vertical descent. The wreckage was highly fragmented. The engine, propeller, and several other components were not located or recovered. Examination of the recovered wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact failures. Toxicological tests on the pilot detected quinine (a medication used to treat malaria, found in tonic water, and available in non-prescription nutritional supplements marketed to reduce the frequency of nocturnal leg cramps) in the liver tissue. Side effects of quinine can include disturbances of vision, hearing, and balance, and the use of quinine by pilots is usually contraindicated, since it may contribute to spatial disorientation under some conditions. No information was obtained regarding the pilot’s possible use of quinine, and it was not possible to determine from the toxicology tests when the pilot might most recently have ingested quinine, or whether he may have been impaired by such use.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA239
- Event ID
- 20080730X01129
- Case number
- NYC08FA239
- 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: ea4e4e79381815ef6c40116fc6d5722269b29baaccca1065c697ce48e0839edf; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:18:05.126Z.