ERA21FA135 · Vans RV7 A
Vans RV7 A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Mayfield Graves County Airport (M25) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21FA135
- 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
- 0
- 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 RV7 A
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV7
- 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
- N383DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mayfield Graves County Airport (M25), Mayfield, KYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2011)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting touch-and-go landings in the experimental, amateur-built airplane. A witness stated that, during the departure climb, “as the airplane went higher…the tail dropped, and the plane went into a back flip.” The witness then observed the airplane come out of the “flip” and descend “nose first” toward the ground. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain north of the departure airport. Another witness reported that he observed the airplane climbing at a high angle of attack during the takeoff. Postaccident examination of the accident site revealed that the wreckage was confined to a small area, which was consistent with a near-vertical impact. The wings showed symmetrical accordion-like crushing damage. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies. According to the available evidence for this accident, the pilot likely exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack and entered an aerodynamic stall, resulting in the pilot’s loss of airplane control and the airplane’s subsequent impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall, loss of airplane control, and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21FA135
- Event ID
- 20210223102659
- Case number
- ERA21FA135
- 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: d2aca549b2a0b449ba0e9ebb793fba8e921f0b7c2289eb9625a2662e38112275; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:25:35.875Z.