CEN18FA389 · Vans RV 4 Undesignat
Vans RV 4 Undesignat · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From North Little Rock Municipal Airport (KORK) to North Little Rock Municipal Airport (KORK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA389
- 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
Vans RV 4 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV-4
- 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
- N534MM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Little Rock Municipal Airport (KORK), N Little Rock, ARTo North Little Rock Municipal Airport (KORK), N Little Rock, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- 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 pilot was conducting a local personal flight to fly over his home; it was the pilot's first flight in the airplane without a flight instructor. According to radar data, the airplane started to descend and the ground speed increased from about 100 knots to about 145 knots just before the airplane flew over the pilot's home. according to a witness, the airplane approached the house and the right wing tipped up, the airplane climbed briefly, and then the airplane rolled inverted, descended, and impacted terrain.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. The description of the flight sequence is consistent with an accelerated stall when the airplane entered into a left bank as the pilot flew over his home.
The pilot had completed a total of 10 hours of instruction in the accident airplane. According to the pilot's flight instructor, most of the pilot's training time consisted of takeoffs and landings and minimal time was spent training maneuvers and performance characteristics.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control while maneuvering which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and an accelerated stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA389
- Event ID
- 20180926X65509
- Case number
- CEN18FA389
- 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, cause areas. 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: 8b75fab2c103ebec90482382864dba89a014bd36ce35e68d632caf06328e92c4; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:48:30.585Z.