WPR19FA124 · Vans RV 6 Undesignat
Vans RV 6 Undesignat · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Grove Field (1W1) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FA124
- 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
Vans RV 6 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Vans 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
- N90LK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grove Field (1W1), Camas, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1990)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and flight instructor were conducting a local flight as part of a flight review. Radar data showed that the airplane departed and proceeded to a nearby airport, where it entered the traffic pattern. The last recorded radar target was located abeam the end of the runway, at an altitude of about 500 ft above ground level. There were no known witnesses to the accident sequence.
The airplane came to rest upright, partially submerged within a pond, about 1,000 ft from the approach end of the runway. Wreckage and impact signatures from surrounding terrain were consistent with a near-vertical impact. Examination revealed no anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Bird remains were found on the right (outboard) arm/clothing of the flight instructor and within the engine compartment. The remains were identified as a species common to the accident locale. It is likely that a bird strike occurred while the airplane was maneuvering in the traffic pattern for landing, resulting in a breach of the canopy/windscreen. Given the lack of mechanical anomalies and the orientation of the wreckage, it is likely that the pilots became distracted and exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilots' inadvertent exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack following an inflight collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FA124
- Event ID
- 20190429X04325
- Case number
- WPR19FA124
- 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, 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: fa0406dc34f50fb8a099b1f4552b2fcf4d063f03f9d9a1732e4624342dba0d53; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:57:11.518Z.