CEN14FA437 · Lancair Company LC 40 550FG
River Bend Energy Lancair Company LC 40 550FG · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Cook Canyon Ranch Airport (TA25) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA437
- 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
- 3 · 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
Lancair Company LC 40 550FG
- Aircraft type
- Lancair LC-40
- 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
- N6500Z
- Operator
- River Bend Energy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cook Canyon Ranch Airport (TA25), Ranger, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2002)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated private pilot and two passengers departed from the remote airport on a dark, moonless night. Two witnesses reported observing the airplane take off from the lighted runway and then turn right. The airplane's bank angle then slowly increased to about 90 degrees, and the airplane subsequently descended. The airplane impacted terrain 0.4 mile from the departure end of the runway. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Several highly experienced, full-time pilots departed the same airport before and after the accident airplane. These pilots described the flight conditions on departure as "extremely dark" and "like a black hole" with no ground lighting, moon, or stars in view to aid with visual orientation. The pilot's night flying currency was limited; his last night flight, flown with a flight instructor, occurred 11 months before the accident; he was also not current to fly at night with passengers. The majority of the pilot's night flying experience (about 24 total hours) took place in a large metropolitan area with high levels of ground lighting; therefore, the pilot's night and instrument flying experience (about 3 hours overall) was likely not sufficient to operate safely in the challenging dark night conditions that existed during the accident flight. An iPad, which displayed mapping information, was likely positioned in front of the right seat passenger. This location may have contributed to the pilot initially overbanking to the right as he may have turned to look at the map just after takeoff. Based on the dark night conditions and the lack of visual references at the time of the accident and the pilot's low overall night and instrument flight time and his lack of recent night flight experience, it is likely that he became spatially disoriented, which led to his loss of airplane control and the subsequent descent into terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of airplane control shortly after takeoff as a result of spatial disorientation due to dark night conditions, the pilot's low overall night and instrument flight time, and his lack of recent night flights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA437
- Event ID
- 20140817X30234
- Case number
- CEN14FA437
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 18471b44aaf61ee1a3d947a2715036255d0e7c135b94ca6bff3b0fd1af93626e; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:24:06.865Z.