ERA09LA392 · Noles Vance L VANS RV7A
Noles Vance L VANS RV7A · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC while maneuvering
From Wimauma Air Park (FD77) to McMinn County Airport (MMI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA392
- 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
Noles Vance L VANS RV7A
- Aircraft type
- Noles Vance VANS RV7A
- 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
- N774US
- Operator
- Noles Vance L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wimauma Air Park (FD77), Wimauma, FLTo McMinn County Airport (MMI), Athens, TN
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot departed on a visual flight rules flight without obtaining a weather briefing. Review of Doppler radar obtained from the National Weather Service depicted two bands of thunderstorms over northern Florida, the first running east-to-west and the other running northeast-to-southwest along central and western Florida. Recorded radar data showed the accident airplane's flight track approaching the band of thunderstorms, turning northeast and parallel to the weather, and then passing between the two weather areas. The flight track then turns back northwestward and penetrates the area of thunderstorms. A witness stated that the clouds in the vicinity of the crash site were overcast about 200 feet with light rain and distant thunder. Examination of the airplane revealed the vertical stabilizer and rudders separated and were not located. Examination of a tail cone section revealed fracture surfaces on the front and rear spar, and the rear doubler assembly exhibited slant-fracture features consistent with ductile overload due to exceeding the design limits. There was no evidence of preexisting damage due to fatigue or corrosion.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions with convective activity and thunderstorms. Contributing to the accident was his failure to get an adequate weather briefing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA392
- Event ID
- 20090709X75206
- Case number
- ERA09LA392
- 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: 4a94e433ce412600caa01befcf211351782934f8005c98f2a31ca649bf3d9373; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:21:23.907Z.