ERA20LA315 · Vans RV9 A
Vans RV9 A · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm on approach
From Jack Edwards National Airport (JKA) to Cross City Airport (CTY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA315
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Vans RV9 A
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV9
- 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
- N4889R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jack Edwards National Airport (JKA), Gulf Shores, ALTo Cross City Airport (CTY), Cross City, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2003)
- 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 · IFR initial approach
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting an instrument flight rules cross-country flight into an area under the influence of a tropical storm, where rain showers and thunderstorms were forecast to prevail. About 1 hour and 45 minutes into the flight, the pilot requested to divert to an airport short of his destination due to weather. At that time, the tropical storm was located south of his position, with bands of rain showers and thunderstorms rotating counter-clockwise around it. The air traffic controller cleared the pilot for the approach; however, she did not provide any weather information to the pilot, to include the local altimeter setting, radar-depicted precipitation, weather advisories, or current destination weather as required by air traffic control directives. The pilot subsequently turned into an area of spiral rain bands, which was growing in size and intensity. The growing area of rain showers and thunderstorms was very unstable, with the potential for updrafts of about 12,000 ft/min. Radar and radio contact was subsequently lost, and wreckage of the airplane was located in the Gulf of Mexico, about 1 nautical mile offshore. Distribution of the wreckage and subsequent evidence observed during the postaccident wreckage examination were indicative of an in-flight breakup.
The pilot’s decision to initiate a flight into an area under the influence of a tropical storm, with forecast rain showers and thunderstorms, increased the potential for an encounter with significant convective weather. Given this information it is likely that the flight encountered strong updrafts while in the growing rain shower band and in instrument meteorological conditions, which ultimately resulted in a loss of control and an in-flight breakup. Had the pilot been provided timely information on the hazardous weather conditions, it is likely that the accident could have been prevented.
Probable cause
The failure of the air traffic controller to provide hazardous weather information to the pilot, resulting in the flight’s encounter with strong updraft conditions, an inflight loss of airplane control, and an in-flight breakup. Contributing was the pilot’s decision to initiate a flight into an area under the influence of a tropical storm, with forecast rain showers and thunderstorms, which increased the potential for an encounter with significant convective weather
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA315
- Event ID
- 20200913X12433
- Case number
- ERA20LA315
- 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: a26e2ca6dbec8a0ea312655380994363c7e90ac4895a6e150162936fe7df3a2d; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:19:46.083Z.