CEN15FA127 · Eagleston John H VANS RV9A
Eagleston John H VANS RV9A · Accident while maneuvering
From Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA) to Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA127
- 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
Eagleston John H VANS RV9A
- Aircraft type
- Eagleston John VANS RV9A
- 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
- N708JE
- Operator
- Angle Dee
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA), Durant, OKTo Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA), Durant, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 7 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot contacted a friend who was in a fishing boat and told him he was going to fly over the lake. The friend then saw the airplane circle over his fishing boat, which was a prearranged signal by the student pilot to notify the friend to drive his fishing boat towards a better fishing spot. The airplane was flying in a descending left turn and impacted the water and sank. The airplane was located the following day and was recovered to the shore. Although damage was sustained during the recovery phase, an examination of the airframe did not find any preimpact anomalies. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with an accelerated stall while the airplane maneuvering at low altitude.
An examination of the engine found that continuity to the engine controls was established with the exception of the carburetor heat gate cable. An examination of the carburetor heat gate cable did not find any deformation consistent with the set screw being installed properly at the time of the impact. A family member reported that the pilot previously had the carburetor heat repaired, but no logbook entry could be found to tell when and by whom the carburetor heat was repaired.
A review of the carburetor icing probability chart found that, at the time of the accident, the airplane operated in an area with the potential for serious icing at glide power. During the circling maneuver, it is likely that the pilot was operating the airplane a reduced power setting, which resulted in the formation of carburetor icing and led to a loss of engine power. However, once power was lost, the pilot continued in a bank turn, which resulted in the accelerated stall, rather than maintaining level flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s continuation of a banked turn following the loss of engine power, which resulted in his failure to maintain adequate airspeed and the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and entering an accelerated stall at low altitude. Contributing to the accident was the loss of engine power due to carburetor icing as a result of the airplane's degraded carburetor heat system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA127
- Event ID
- 20150128X34553
- Case number
- CEN15FA127
- 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, coordinates. 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: e02bcc03caea0008436bc169ad5741edeebfeb991fc006734b5ebb442aed55dc; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:31:41.120Z.