WPR10LA299 · Oliver VANS RV-9A
Oliver VANS RV-9A · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Challis Airport (LLJ) to May Airport (0U8)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA299
- 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
Oliver VANS RV-9A
- Aircraft type
- Oliver VANS RV-9A
- 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
- N559B
- Operator
- Oliver Robert K
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Challis Airport (LLJ), Challis, IDTo May Airport (0U8), May, ID
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While approaching his destination airport, the pilot made a left turn to circle over an adjacent town. He then reduced his angle of bank, but continued in a left turn so as to overfly and evaluate the surface condition of the dirt/turf airstrip where he planned to land. At the time that he ultimately rolled wings-level to parallel the runway, he had been in a left turn for approximately four minutes. About 20 seconds after the pilot rolled out of the turn, the airplane rolled to the left and descended into the terrain. A forensic toxicology examination determined that the pilot's blood contained levels of an over-the-counter sedating antihistamine that would be expected to result in impairment, and it is likely that the pilot lost control of his airplane due to spatial disorientation exacerbated by the effects of the antihistamine. A postaccident examination of the airplane's flight control system and primary structure performed by a Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness inspector did not reveal any evidence of a malfunction or anomaly that would have contributed to the rapid roll and descent into the terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during maneuvering flight due to spatial disorientation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's ingestion of an impairing level of over-the-counter medication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA299
- Event ID
- 20100619X92228
- Case number
- WPR10LA299
- 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: 4daceb254b994bce746dbad1adf81773712f4f73bf28a815fae8b2e6edc416de; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:53:26.139Z.