CEN14LA148 · Vans RV-9A
Vans RV-9A · Accident: loss of control in flight
From Tribune Municipal Airport (5K2) to Tribune Municipal Airport (5K2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA148
- 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
Vans RV-9A
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV-9
- 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
- N7872
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tribune Municipal Airport (5K2), Tribune, KSTo Tribune Municipal Airport (5K2), Tribune, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to data recorded by the experimental, amateur-built airplane's multifunction displays, about 10 minutes after the airplane took off for the personal flight, it entered two sequential 360-degree left turns with gravitational accelerations (g) of 2.10 g and 2.80 g, respectively. The airplane then entered its final left turn with an acceleration of 3.20 g, passed through about 180 degrees, and subsequently descended into terrain. Examination of the airplane wreckage revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
A review of the private pilot's primary care physician and neurologist records revealed that the pilot had a 10-month history of a rapidly progressive neurological disorder that affected his muscle movements. Three months before the accident, the primary care physician advised the pilot not to drive or fly due to his impaired response time. Four days before the accident, the neurologist noted that the pilot had asymmetric moderate rigidity in his arms and severely slowed movements generally. The postmortem neuropathology analysis identified widespread degenerative disease in multiple areas of the brain. It is likely that the pilot's neurologic disorder impaired his ability to safely operate the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control while conducting high-g turns, which resulted in impact with terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s improper decision to initiate the flight with a severe progressive neurological disorder that likely impaired his ability to safely operate the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA148
- Event ID
- 20140224X00624
- Case number
- CEN14LA148
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-02-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: be53d0faae552c041b7c9e845d625e9ab76c6cb7afececa4502f138392e48c99; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:11:06.252Z.