ERA16FA127 · Sheahen Dane E RV-8 A
Sheahen Dane E RV-8 A · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6) to Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16FA127
- 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
- 2 · 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
Sheahen Dane E RV-8 A
- Aircraft type
- Sheahen Dane RV-8
- 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
- N838RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Port Orange, FLTo Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF), Winter Haven, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 14 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
- En route
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
The private pilot was in cruise flight in the experimental, amateur-built airplane. The pilot transmitted a mayday call via radio, stating that he had "lost an engine." Witnesses saw the airplane before impact and stated that the airplane was not making any sound. One witness saw the airplane enter a sharp turn before entering a nose-low descent. The airplane then impacted an open field; the sharp turn followed by the nose-low descent is consistent with an aerodynamic stall.
Examination of the experimental, kit-built engine revealed that the crankshaft had fractured forward of the No. 2 connecting rod journal. Further testing of the crankshaft revealed that the fracture was the result of fatigue cracking. There were no chemical variations or foreign material present in the metallurgical testing. The crankshaft only had 20 hours total time in service, suggesting that initiation of the cracking and the subsequent failure of the crankshaft was almost immediate. As there were no apparent metallurgical mechanical deficiencies with the crankshaft, the fatigue failure was likely the result of unusual stresses; however, there was insufficient information about the engine operation in the final 17 minutes of flight to determine the reason for the failure.
Although the pilot's toxicology results tested positive for Zolpidem, a prescription medication for the treatment of insomnia, the values were below the normal therapeutic range and there was no evidence that impairment contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering for a forced landing; which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the fatigue failure of the crankshaft for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16FA127
- Event ID
- 20160312X04625
- Case number
- ERA16FA127
- 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: bb2b059eb2b7151d04dd0f7350074f817a9f1f6551c27a97fa7308ab5a424da8; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:42:52.840Z.