CEN20LA227 · Vans RV8 Undesignat
Vans RV8 Undesignat · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Mandan Municipal Airport (Y19) to Stanton, ND (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA227
- 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 RV8 Undesignat
- 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
- N836JC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mandan Municipal Airport (Y19), Mandan, NDTo Stanton, ND (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airplane was parked on the ramp before the flight, a witness noted that the aft cockpit seatbelt was wrapped around the control stick to secure the flight control surfaces; the conditions at the airport at the time were described by a second witness as "very windy." The first witness reminded the pilot to remove the belt before departure. Both witnesses noted that the airplane's elevator was up as the airplane taxied out for departure. The airplane's takeoff ground roll was short, and as the airplane became airborne, it entered a steep climb to about 50 ft above the ground, rolled left, then entered a vertical descent to ground contact. The witnesses noted that the airplane's elevator was in the full up position at the accident site and as the fire continued, the elevator slowly lowered.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The seat belt webbing was not identified in the charred cockpit. Given the available information, it is likely that the pilot, seated in the front cockpit of the tandem-configured airplane, failed to remove the seat belt from the aft control stick before departure, resulting in a loss of control during the initial climb and subsequent impact with terrain. The elevator likely lowered as the webbing material melted due to the fire.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to remove the seat belt used as a flight control lock from the aft cockpit control stick before takeoff, which resulted in a loss of control during takeoff and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA227
- Event ID
- 20200613X70924
- Case number
- CEN20LA227
- 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: fa0f3e02baec805438ac3ab803734bacd11559839698ab013a6dae4dd8d3a11b; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:16:12.019Z.