DEN08LA139 · Dickey RV-6A
Dickey RV-6A · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Fayette County Airport (FYE) to Hutchinson County Airport (BGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA139
- 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
Dickey RV-6A
- Aircraft type
- Dickey 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
- N22163
- Operator
- Ron S. Dickey · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fayette County Airport (FYE), Somerville, TNTo Hutchinson County Airport (BGD), Borger, 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 · cruise
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot was flying under visual flight rules on a cross-country flight and encountered instrument meteorological conditions. A review of the pilot's logbook showed that he had not flown in actual instrument conditions for over five years. The pilot last logged simulated instrument time during his flight review in February, 2007, and prior to then had not logged simulated instrument time since September, 2004. According to the pilot's wife, she thought that the airplane was equipped for instrument flight, but this could not be verified. Radar data showed the airplane changing altitude and making large heading changes during the last ten minutes of flight. The last four radar returns showed the airplane descending in a right turn from 8,500 feet msl to zero altitude in 23 seconds. Witnesses heard the airplane engine running and saw the airplane exit the clouds in a steep nose-down attitude and impact the terrain. Examination of the airplane disclosed no preimpact anomalies. The airplane's turning ground track and the challenging visibility conditions were conducive to the onset of pilot spatial disorientation. The airplane's rapid, near-vertical descent is consistent with the pilot's loss of control of the airplane because of spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to continue flight under visual flight rules into an area of reduced visibility weather conditions, which resulted in the pilot's spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of aircraft control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of recent experience flying in instrument conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA139
- Event ID
- 20080814X01242
- Case number
- DEN08LA139
- 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. 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: 27cae0c1f44b9c313da8b442ea48691e702dd4b4328ac443dd5bb793f8573a0e; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:20:55.161Z.