WPR20LA237 · Vans VANS RV-8 Undesignat
Vans VANS RV-8 Undesignat · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Tehachapi Municipal Airport (TSP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA237
- 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 VANS RV-8 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV-8
- 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
- N138PM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CATo Tehachapi Municipal Airport (TSP), Tehachapi, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2018)
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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
- 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
Witnesses reported that the accident airplane made a straight-in approach to land. The airplane touched down onto the runway tailwheel first and oscillated between its tailwheel and main landing gear several times. It then tipped up onto the left main gear and turned toward the right edge of the runway surface. The pilot initiated an aborted landing and according to a witness, the airplane lifted off quickly but made a "perceivably slow" turn to a left crosswind. The nose of the airplane was "alarmingly" high, and the airplane did not appear to be accelerating. The left turn steepened as the airplane descended behind buildings in a nose-up attitude with the wings wobbling. The engine "cut out" and, almost immediately thereafter. they heard the impact. The airframe and engine examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Recorded data from the airplane was consistent with what the witnesses reported. The engine power never exceeded 67%, which is likely why the airplane did not appear to accelerate during the takeoff; however, this would not have resulted in the loss of control. Given the reported nose-high attitude and steep left turn, it is likely the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack and that it stalled at an altitude too low for the pilot to recover before it impacted the building.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed and his exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at too low of an altitude to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA237
- Event ID
- 20200724X65101
- Case number
- WPR20LA237
- 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: a4526ad517d564b6142b77c815b876a4fa9c9532e21954d6e52d6dbd4d2b3cae; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:17:23.878Z.