ERA13LA072 · Hansen David Daniel RV-4
Hansen David Daniel RV-4 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Long Island Airpark (NC26) to Mid-Carolina Regional Airport (RUQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA072
- 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
- 0 · 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
Hansen David Daniel RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Hansen David Daniel RV-4
- 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
- N416DH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island Airpark (NC26), Long Island, NCTo Mid-Carolina Regional Airport (RUQ), Salisbury, NC
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the engine began losing power. The pilot in the front seat, who was flying the airplane, attempted to troubleshoot the engine issue, including activating the carburetor heat; however, the engine continued to run roughly, so he chose to divert to a nearby airport. The rear-seat pilot then took control of the airplane. While on final approach to the runway, the rear-seat pilot asked the front-seat pilot, who was seated near the wing flap control, to configure the flaps for landing. After the flaps fully extended, they retracted. The rear-seat pilot then asked the front-seat pilot to re-extend the flaps. About this time, the rear-seat pilot noticed that people and vehicles were at the end of the runway and chose to abort the landing by increasing engine power and turning the airplane toward an adjacent field. However, the airplane had sufficient altitude and power, so the pilot should have been able to make the runway and land safely. During the subsequent attempt to land the airplane, it stalled and then touched down hard. The airplane was substantially damaged, and both pilots were seriously injured.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the wing flaps appeared to be fully extended. The front-seat pilot, who was a co-owner, had been working to rectify several maintenance discrepancies he had identified after purchasing the airplane 2 months earlier, one of which included a leaking right fuel tank; he had repaired the exterior of the tank. Examination of the engine and fuel system identified the presence of fuel tank sealant on the exterior of the steel braid of both fuel tanks' flexible pick-up tubes and flaked pieces of fuel tank sealant and other contaminants within the gascolator. However, examinations revealed that the fuel screens at the engine-driven fuel pump and the carburetor were not contaminated. Both fuel tanks were found breached. An examination of the engine did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although the temperature and dew point about the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice, it unlikely that carburetor ice played a role in the loss of engine power because the pilots' reported using carburetor heat following the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examinations of the engine and fuel system revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Contributing to the severity of the accident was the rear-seat pilots' decision to abort the landing with partial engine power and his failure to successfully perform a forced landing to an available airfield.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA072
- Event ID
- 20121203X03615
- Case number
- ERA13LA072
- 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: c15854db8e1f7145a9a8ed84c5d02a362dac7402af8e505ef6c60149ff88b80b; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:30:28.533Z.