WPR20LA040 · Vans RV 6
Vans RV 6 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Safford Regional Airport (SAD) to Safford Regional Airport (SAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA040
- 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
- 0 · 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
- 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
- N616RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Safford Regional Airport (SAD), Safford, AZTo Safford Regional Airport (SAD), Safford, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
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 reported that, while the airplane was traveling westbound at 1,100 ft above the ground, the engine stopped producing power without warning. The propeller continued to windmill. The pilot initiated a 180° turn back toward the airport and attempted to restart the engine but was unable to do so. The pilot decided to land the airplane onto a nearby cotton field. When the airplane touched down, the landing gear sunk into the soft dirt, and nosed over.
During a postaccident examination, the engine was able to be started, but it operated poorly and was smoking before it stopped producing power. Disassembly of the engine revealed that the two rotors and five of the six apex seals remained intact. The remaining apex seal was fractured in half. It was not possible to determine whether the apex seal fractured before or during the accident sequence. No other anomalies were revealed.
The available evidence for this accident precluded a determination of whether the fractured apex seal caused the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA040
- Event ID
- 20191206X45719
- Case number
- WPR20LA040
- 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: 279cddb3fee08e217f69462d6fcd31b50124f096bd5eae743ff9e756576a75d4; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:44:31.706Z.