CHI98LA129 · Good VELOCITY
Good VELOCITY · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From UNKNOWN to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA129
- 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
- 1 · 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
Good VELOCITY
- Aircraft type
- Good VELOCITY
- 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
- N234Q
- Operator
- Douglas C. Dufrense · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UNKNOWNTo not recorded
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Stolen aircraft/unauthorized use, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The U.S. Customs Service Air Interdiction Coordination center (DAICC), received notification from a park ranger at Big Bend National Park, TX, of an unidentified airplane entering the United States from Mexico. This airplane did not notify U.S. authorities of its arrival. A U.S. Customs Service aircraft was dispatched, and it intercepted the airplane near Alpine, TX. The U.S. Customs Service aircraft followed the airplane on a northeasterly heading for over 8 hours, until arriving in the Detroit, MI, area. The airplane was observed overflying the Detroit Metropolitan Airport and circling over the downtown area, until it descended and crashed into an athletic field. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane was void of fuel. No other anomaly was found. Approximately 408 pounds of marijuana was recovered from the wreckage.
Probable cause
improper planning/decision by the pilot, by using the airplane in an illegal activity and allowing the fuel to be exhausted before landing. Factors relating to this accident were: the pilot being under pressure to reach his destination with his illegal cargo, and trees in the forced landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA129
- Event ID
- 20001211X09823
- Case number
- CHI98LA129
- 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: fcabd4401dc4288d020f44cbcad13bc1e35106a968c2a012751a53c38a31d12b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:37:19.248Z.