ERA12LA011 · Rivers William J KR-2
Rivers William J KR-2 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ) to Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA011
- 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
Rivers William J KR-2
- Aircraft type
- Rivers William KR-2
- 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
- N7026G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ), Wytheville, VATo Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ), Wytheville, VA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who had accrued 105 hours of flight time, had recently purchased the airplane but had no time in that type airplane. He had been advised by other pilots that he was not ready to fly such an airplane because of the airplane's performance. On the day of the accident, the pilot conducted numerous high-speed taxis and would momentarily lift the airplane off the runway and then land again in an effort to become familiar with the airplane. That afternoon, the pilot again performed a number of high-speed taxis and then took off. The airplane climbed to traffic pattern altitude and made a slow left turn and joined the crosswind leg of the pattern. About 5 seconds after completing the turn, the airplane, which had a right-turning tendency at high angles of attack and high power settings due to its counterclockwise-rotating propeller, rolled to the right, pitched nose down, and entered a spin, completing four rotations before impacting in a field. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any evidence of preimpact malfunctions or failures of the airplane or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in the airplane make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA011
- Event ID
- 20111006X50957
- Case number
- ERA12LA011
- 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: 2ffc578766a20fd7e1b9b60b480e0a3be5c490b8fb98f3623585c5320148978b; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:54:57.899Z.