ERA23LA153 · Green Richard H VAN'S RV7A
Green Richard H VAN'S RV7A · Accident during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Albert Whitted Airport (SPG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA153
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Green Richard H VAN'S RV7A
- Aircraft type
- Green Richard VAN S RV7A
- 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
- N4811E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Albert Whitted Airport (SPG), St. Petersburg, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that during takeoff from runway 23 when the flight was 20 ft above the runway, the tip-up canopy became unlatched and “flipped up” which eliminated his forward vision and made the airplane difficult to control. He returned for landing and reported the, “landing was hard.” During the landing roll the nose landing gear dug in and the airplane nosed over resulting in structural damage to the vertical stabilizer and damage to the rudder.
According to a Service Letter from the airplane designer, in the event that a tip-up canopy opened in-flight, field reports indicate that the airplane will “most likely pitch nose down abruptly. The severity of the pitching moment can depend on speed, attitude, and weight and balance.”
According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, postaccident examination of the tip-up canopy revealed the canopy frame was distorted and the left side of the canopy frame was damaged which prevented the left aft side from latching closed. The right aft side of the canopy could be latched closed and was unable to be manually raised once closed. The airplane was equipped with a secondary canopy latch at the top rear of the canopy frame. No discrepancies of it were reported. Further, no discrepancies were reported or observed on either “catch tooth” of the latch handle or canopy latch. The airplane was not equipped with a tip-up canopy latch warning system.
While the FAA inspector reported no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction of the canopy latch system (primary or secondary), the damage to the canopy frame likely occurred during the accident sequence. It is likely that the canopy was not closed and latched on either aft side and the canopy latch handle was not fully engaged with the canopy latch during takeoff. Had the airplane been equipped with a tip-up canopy latch warning system, it is likely that the improperly closed canopy would have been detected by the pilot.
Probable cause
The hard landing and subsequent nose over during the forced landing. Contributing to the accident were the improperly secured canopy, and the distraction it created.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA153
- Event ID
- 20230316106903
- Case number
- ERA23LA153
- 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: 0a425392f400276c5c183bfa05c72dd1b6254008d4cf0308710cba149f56aded; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:25:49.897Z.