ATL98FA017 · Mark Ewart VELOCITY STANDARD RG VELOCITY S
Mark Ewart VELOCITY STANDARD RG VELOCITY S · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to HXB · Wilmington
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98FA017
- 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
- 4 · 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
Mark Ewart VELOCITY STANDARD RG VELOCITY S
- Aircraft type
- Mark Ewart VELOCITY STANDARD RG
- 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
- N907ME
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FLTo HXB · Wilmington
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, adjustment, improper
- Propeller system/accessories › Loose
- Propeller system/accessories › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following departure from an en route fuel and rest stop, the pilot reported a propeller problem and returned to the departure airport. The propeller was disassembled to repair what the pilot reported was a failure of the electrical pitch change for the propeller blades. According to witnesses, who saw and talked with the pilot as he worked on the airplane, he (the pilot) was upset over the failure, and he was anxious about hurrying to reach his destination. The pilot, who also held a homebuilt repairman certificate, did not follow the manufacturer's torquing procedures, which were to be followed after replacement of the propeller. After about an hour of flight, following the repairs, one propeller blade separated from the airplane, and a forced landing ensued. The airplane subsequently hit trees, then collided with the ground, inverted. Postcrash examination of the propeller indicated that a propeller blade had loosened during the flight, and subsequently it failed due to overload forces.
Probable cause
improper maintenance procedures used by the pilot/repairman, which resulted in the loosening and eventual failure of the propeller. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's self-imposed pressure to hurry to the destination, and trees in the forced landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98FA017
- Event ID
- 20001208X09130
- Case number
- ATL98FA017
- 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: c520931ee531bec4efd602ec9eea11e77c327d2086f52118332f6c5659ccc31d; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:45:07.272Z.