ERA26LA210 · John Bradley VANS RV-7
John Bradley VANS RV-7 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA210
- 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
- 0 · 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
John Bradley VANS RV-7
- Aircraft type
- John Bradley VANS RV-7
- 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
- N519JS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2026)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/builder had recently completed constructing the experimental amateur-built airplane and had successfully flown for about 15 hours over three days. On the day of the accident, he had completed seven takeoffs and landings and was preparing for another takeoff in the tailwheel-equipped airplane. According to the pilot, he aligned the airplane with the runway heading to take off. As he slowly applied engine power, the airplane began to turn “hard” to the left. The pilot attempted to add right rudder input to correct the left turn, but the airplane continued to the left, exited the runway, and ground looped in the grass. The pilot estimated that the airplane traveled a total of 235 ft down the runway from where power was applied to where the airplane came to rest. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right aileron and empennage during the runway excursion. The pilot examined the airplane after the accident and found that the left wheel was “hot” difficult to rotate. He disassembled the left wheel and brake system and observed that there were significant grooves in the brake pads and debris lodged within the brake rotor.
Probable cause
Contamination of the left wheel brake system with debris, which resulted in a loss of directional control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA210
- Event ID
- 20260519203017
- Case number
- ERA26LA210
- 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: ac63698f137c8ce288edc63ffcf97ae39154245854b44c1eec6999c69fae2699; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:31:07.079Z.