CEN23FA359 · Vans RV14 A
Vans RV14 A · Accident while maneuvering
From Litchfield Municipal Airport (3LF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA359
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 RV14 A
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV14
- 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
- N6161
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Litchfield Municipal Airport (3LF), Litchfield, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2022)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 12, 2023, about 0848 central daylight time, a Vans RV-14A airplane, N6161, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Virden, Illinois. The pilot was fatally injured. The flight was operated under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) data provided by the Federal Aviation Administration captured the accident flight. The airplane departed the Litchfield Municipal Airport (3LF), Litchfield, Illinois, from runway 27 at 0838. The airplane flew to the north toward Virden and at 0847 made a sharp left turn with an estimated heading change of 125° and headed toward the southwest. Witnesses in Virden observed the airplane flying to the southwest inverted. Some reported the engine made unusual noises. One observed the airplane bank left and roll the airplane upright before the airplane descended and impacted terrain. The airplane collided with trees and terrain about 0.8 miles southwest of the center of Virden. The first impact signatures were broken tree limbs about 20 ft above the ground. The main impact point was located just beneath the trees. Evidence at the scene was consist with an impact angle around 45° nose low. The airplane remained relatively intact with both wings, the engine, fuselage, and empennage accounted for at the accident site. The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA359
- Event ID
- 20230812192848
- Case number
- CEN23FA359
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: 9b436e6d08eb6107961583968659ced019ef83cf456de51a69410cfde2f4a3d7; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:04:44.404Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The narrative states the airplane departed Litchfield Municipal Airport (3LF), Litchfield, Illinois; "Lichtfield" is a misspelling.