CHI95FA071 · Bacon QUESTAIR-VENTURE QUESTAIR-V
Bacon QUESTAIR-VENTURE QUESTAIR-V · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) to Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95FA071
- 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
- 2 · 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
Bacon QUESTAIR-VENTURE QUESTAIR-V
- Aircraft type
- Bacon QUESTAIR-VENTURE
- 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
- N4QV
- Operator
- Questair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), PALWAUKEE, ILTo Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS), Cheyenne, WY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · descent
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PRIVATE PILOT DECLARED AN EMERGENCY WHILE AT 16,000 FEET IN VFR CONDITIONS OVERHEAD THE 9,000 FOOT RUNWAY. DURING THE DESCENT HE STATED HIS ENGINE RAN ROUGH, THEN SMOOTHED OUT. APPROXIMATELY 4,000 FT AGL HE STATED HE 'HAD A MAJOR PROBLEM...COMING DOWN.' WITNESSES DESCRIBED THE AIRPLANE IN A STEEP DESCENT, THEN ENTERING A SPIN AT APPROXIMATELY 1,000 FT AGL. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED 3/4 MILE SHORT OF THE RUNWAY. TESTING REVEALED THE CRANKSHAFT FAILED IN 2 PLACES, BOTH WITH AREAS OF FATIGUE CRACKING. THE FATIGUE ORIGIN WAS SUBSURFACE, THE SHAFT WAS MACHINED, NOT FORGED, AND HAD AN ESTIMATED 150 TO 200 HOURS IN OPERATION. NO OTHER DISCREPANCIES WERE FOUND WITH THE AIRPLANE.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the emergency descent, resulting in a stall/spin. Factors were material defects in the material used to manufacture the crankshaft, resulting in the crankshaft fracturing after approximately 200 hours in service.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95FA071
- Event ID
- 20001207X02831
- Case number
- CHI95FA071
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: b4c013169db441516adcd78ca6f9dfe26ad635485ec9d6c972a99ea2cba2da6d; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:53:03.147Z.