WPR26FA262 · Vans RV-4
Vans RV-4 · Accident
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26FA262
- 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 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
- N98GB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1994)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 July 16, 2026, at 0701 Pacific daylight time, an experimental amateur built Vans RV-4, N98GB, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Yuba City, California. The pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. A review of recorded video from the Sutter County Airport, Yuba City, California, and a neighboring business, captured the airplane at various portions of the accident flight. One video showed the airplane departing runway 17 and then initiating a turn back to the airport. The airplane overshot runway 35 and traveled out of the frame of the camera. As the airplane traveled into view of a neighboring business’s video, it appeared the airplane was on the ground traveling in a northerly direction before it rotated along its vertical axis to the left about 270° and came to rest upright in an open field. The airplane’s first identified point of contact (FIPC) was the airport’s northern perimeter chain link fence. The debris field was about 230 ft in length, oriented on a 348° heading and consisted of portions of wooden propeller blades and the rudder. The airplane came to rest upright on a 056° heading and remained mostly intact. Flight control continuity was established from the cockpit to all the flight control surfaces. The airplane was recovered to a secure location for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26FA262
- Event ID
- 20260716203407
- Case number
- WPR26FA262
- 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. 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: bb768a327beacd5640807979d4fa34470961a386869dc139393247d5e3904efb; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:18:39.110Z.