ERA16FA297 · Heberlein Ronald VANS RV 9A
Heberlein Ronald VANS RV 9A · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Sebring Regional Airport (SEF) to Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport (PMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16FA297
- 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
Heberlein Ronald VANS RV 9A
- Aircraft type
- Heberlein Ronald VANS RV 9A
- 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
- N379RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sebring Regional Airport (SEF), Sebring, FLTo Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport (PMH), Portsmouth, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 11 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 76-year-old commercial pilot was making a personal cross-country flight in the airplane. Video from the departure airport's security camera showed the airplane taking off about 38 minutes before sunrise. Shortly thereafter, a witness 4 miles southeast of the airport reported hearing the airplane fly over at a low altitude followed by the sound of impact.
The ground scars and wreckage distribution at the accident site indicated that the airplane likely impacted terrain in a near straight-and-level attitude and at an airspeed within the normal flight envelope, suggesting that the airplane was under control at the time of impact. During examination of the airframe and engine, no anomalies were found that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
The pilot's autopsy revealed that he had severe coronary artery disease but no evidence of an old or new heart attack. An acute cardiac event would leave no evidence on autopsy; however, given the indications that this was controlled flight into terrain, it is unlikely that the pilot's coronary artery disease contributed to the circumstances of the accident.
The pilot's toxicology findings included two potentially-impairing sedating antihistamines, chlorpheniramine and diphenhydramine. However, due to limited specimens, blood drug levels were not available, and the investigation was unable to determine whether the sedating antihistamines or the conditions being treated by the medications contributed to the circumstances of the accident. Finally, the pilot had recently been diagnosed with early dementia of the Alzheimer's type, and the cognitive and visuospatial deficits resulting from this disease likely impaired his ability to safely control the airplane. However, the investigation was unable to determine if the cognitive impairment directly contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16FA297
- Event ID
- 20160824X60026
- Case number
- ERA16FA297
- 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: 665c1173387a8dbc0ba1b154a8341d6c5fed3a493b0184af90bfc1f0dc73bc9f; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:58:50.209Z.