ERA15FA336 · Henderson W A/Johnson W L RV 6A
Henderson W A/Johnson W L RV 6A · Accident en route
From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI) to Shelby County Airport (EET)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15FA336
- 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
Henderson W A/Johnson W L RV 6A
- Aircraft type
- Henderson W A/johnson RV-6
- 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
- N216LA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI), Shelbyville, TNTo Shelby County Airport (EET), Alabaster, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the cruise portion of a cross-country flight, about 20 minutes after takeoff, the commercial pilot stopped responding to air traffic controllers as the airplane reversed course. It then climbed from 6,500 ft to 9,000 ft mean sea level and completed two left circuits before descending rapidly into the ground. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. The pilot's autopsy revealed that he had severe coronary artery disease, scarring from previous heart attacks, and evidence of ongoing or recent damage to two new areas of heart muscle, indicating recent heart attacks. All of these conditions put him at risk of experiencing acute heart failure or a disturbance of heart rhythm (arrhythmia). Both acute heart failure and arrhythmia can rapidly lead to decreased consciousness due to low blood pressure. It is likely that acute symptoms from complications of the pilot's ongoing heart attacks resulted in impairment /incapacitation of the pilot and led to his loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The pilot's incapacitation from complications of a recent heart attack, which resulted in a loss of control during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15FA336
- Event ID
- 20150902X74630
- Case number
- ERA15FA336
- 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: 8b895d60bcd6f797d94d341798f6b45d3e5361b14c4d484199e383eb00850334; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:29:54.687Z.