CEN20CA220 · Vans RV8
Vans RV8 · Accident: aircraft structural failure during landing
From Leesville Airport (L39) to Southland Field (UXL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA220
- 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 RV8
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV8
- 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
- N44LA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesville Airport (L39), Leesville, LATo Southland Field (UXL), Sulphur, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Aircraft structural 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while landing his tailwheel airplane on runway 15 with gusty winds from 250°, there was a slight bounce when he touched the runway with the right tire. As the left main tire touched down, he felt the left side of the airplane "drop suddenly." As the airplane continued down the runway, it began to veer to the left. He applied full right rudder and right brake, which kept the airplane on the runway for several hundred feet before directional control could no longer be maintained. The airplane exited the runway and nosed over which resulted in substantial damage to the right elevator.
A post-accident examination revealed a fractured left landing gear inboard attach bracket.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control as a result of a fractured landing gear attach bracket.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA220
- Event ID
- 20200608X34033
- Case number
- CEN20CA220
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 939e60d12526a3e424b3247c989c122bfbf40c86f2195dff7b9cda0314f82c87; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:48:00.467Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. UXL is Southland Field at Sulphur, LA; the recorded city name is misspelled.