CEN22FA064 · Vans RV-4
Vans RV-4 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Meadow Lake Airport (FLY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA064
- 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 RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV-4
- 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
- N456MC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Meadow Lake Airport (FLY), Colorado Springs, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2020)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- 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 accident occurred during a three-airplane formation flight to practice position changes and low-level maneuvering. About 30 minutes after takeoff, the pilots began a descent toward a reservoir, with the accident airplane as the lead. The airplanes were in a right-echelon route formation and were prepared to go to a trail formation for low-level maneuvering in the river canyon.
About 1 mile north of the reservoir, the accident pilot directed the two other pilots to “go trail,” and he executed a left turn and descent toward a river canyon that extended north of the reservoir. The pilots reported they entered a descent and encountered strong surface winds and turbulence above the canyon rim. The accident pilot’s airplane descended below the canyon rim and continued the descent to near the bottom of the canyon. One pilot reported there was a strong south-southwest wind (210° at 35 mph) a couple thousand feet above the surface, so he remained above the canyon rim to assess potential turbulence. During the third turn and less than a minute inside the canyon, the pilots observed the accident airplane’s left wing contact the edge of the canyon at high speed. The airplane fragmented and came to a stop in the canyon.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operations. Local authorities who responded to the accident location reported intense and variable winds within the canyon that were different than the winds they encountered above the canyon rim. Available weather information indicated that conditions in the vicinity of the accident site were favorable for the presence of moderate-to-severe turbulence. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot’s loss of control due to high-speed, variable wind conditions while maneuvering at low altitude in a canyon.
The autopsy revealed the pilot’s severe coronary artery disease put him at risk for an acute coronary event, which could acutely cause chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, or fainting. However, there is nothing about the operational information in this investigation to suggest such an event contributed to the circumstances of the accident. Therefore, it is unlikely his coronary artery disease contributed to this accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain while intentionally maneuvering in a canyon at low altitude. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to enter a canyon environment at a low altitude, and the sudden change in wind conditions within the canyon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA064
- Event ID
- 20211208104374
- Case number
- CEN22FA064
- 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: 8ae08cade1237e030bbb64ccb0cca21daa28beb15ad3352fe912a11b14b9bd89; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:38:30.682Z.