WPR15LA084 · Bruct J Myers RV-9A
Bruct J Myers RV-9A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Prineville Airport (S39) to Bend, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA084
- 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
Bruct J Myers RV-9A
- Aircraft type
- Bruct J Myers 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
- N8080S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prineville Airport (S39), Prineville, ORTo Bend, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the private pilot departing in his experimental, amateur-built airplane. He stated that, after rotation, the airplane climbed in a nose-high attitude and drifted left of the runway centerline. Upon reaching an altitude about 1,000 ft above ground level, the airplane's right wing dipped, and the airplane descended in a right spin and impacted a parallel taxiway. The airplane was mostly consumed by a postcrash fire. Subsequent examination revealed that the canopy had been ejected clear of the airframe on impact, and the canopy lock appeared in the open position. The elevator trim tab was found in the nose-up trim position; however, due to the severity of the fire and impact damage, the reason for or relevance of these findings could not be determined.
Although the pilot was being treated for several medical conditions that he had not reported to the Federal Aviation Administration, it is unlikely that the conditions or their treatment contributed to the circumstances of this accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and his exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during the climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA084
- Event ID
- 20150111X91553
- Case number
- WPR15LA084
- 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: b10dc238f9ce487b2696f2366bd4009b0a32c9775003effae7599e0c973197b4; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:30:52.659Z.