ERA10LA280 · Gardner Douglas P VAN/RV8A
Gardner Douglas P VAN/RV8A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL) to Sebring Regional Airport (SEF)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA280
- 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
Gardner Douglas P VAN/RV8A
- Aircraft type
- Gardner Douglas VAN RV8A
- 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
- N456DG
- Operator
- Gardner Douglas P
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FLTo Sebring Regional Airport (SEF), Sebring, FL
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was part of a flight of six aircraft that were flying to a nearby airport together. Radar data indicated the airplane flew a relatively straight flight path from the departure airport and then initiated a descent when it was about 5 miles from the destination airport. The airplane leveled off momentarily at an altitude of 1,000 feet and then performed a 200-foot climb over the next 24 seconds, followed by a rapid descent until it impacted the ground. The airplane impacted the ground in a right wing-low, near vertical attitude. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Toxicology testing noted the presence of tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary active substance in marijuana, in the tissues of the pilot. No blood was available for testing, which made it not possible to accurately estimate the time of most recent use of the drug or whether the pilot may have been impaired by that use.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA280
- Event ID
- 20100523X12354
- Case number
- ERA10LA280
- 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: e34f97e165aa1da1eeff89e981209ad67a01ea5d81fd6ad186eeb3f642b51cdc; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:49:21.450Z.