CEN21LA080 · Vans RV6
Vans RV6 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA080
- 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 RV6
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV6
- 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
- N69HF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS), Galveston, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before the accident flight, the pilot was seen conducting maintenance on the airplane in front of his hangar. Witnesses heard the pilot start the engine and saw the airplane take off from the hangar/ramp area and stated that the pilot appeared to be struggling to control the airplane. About 1.5 hours later, the airplane was seen flying at low altitude over a residential area before it impacted the ground. Witnesses stated that the engine was running normally before the accident and that the airplane appeared “out of control.”
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Postmortem toxicology testing of specimens from the pilot were consistent with the recent use of alcohol and a sedating antihistamine. It is likely that the pilot was impaired from ingested alcohol, which contributed to his loss of airplane control. Whether effects from his use of the antihistamine also contributed to the accident could not be determined.
Although family and friends described the pilot having episodes of unusual behavior in the years before the accident, no significant medical conditions were identified during the investigation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s impairment by the effects of ingested alcohol, which resulted in the loss of airplane control and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA080
- Event ID
- 20201209102390
- Case number
- CEN21LA080
- 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: 0f936e00d0156725afc47ee4fc5748616a708b308fec3a80c031a3abf1e18e6d; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:23:21.649Z.