LAX99LA054 · Williams HURRICAN HP HURRICAN H
Williams HURRICAN HP HURRICAN H · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From AJO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA054
- 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
Williams HURRICAN HP HURRICAN H
- Aircraft type
- Williams HURRICAN HP
- 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
- N323DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AJOTo 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 · climb to 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly › Seized
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Overtemperature
- Engine assembly, piston › Overtemperature
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Corona, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed the airport traffic pattern and reduced from a full power climb to a cruise power climb setting and checked the CHT and EGT gages, which were indicating in the normal range. After passing 2,500 feet msl, the engine rpm's slowed, then the engine quit altogether. While descending toward a football field for a forced landing, the pilot attempted to restart the engine without success. As he neared the field the pilot observed people on the landing area and diverted to an empty parking lot. During the landing the airplane collided with ground obstructions. Examination of the Rotax 503 engine revealed scored and heat discolored pistons.
Probable cause
The seizure of the engine due to a cylinder/piston overheat condition for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA054
- Event ID
- 20001211X11469
- Case number
- LAX99LA054
- 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: fa0a06418d04f72c0dbc9e54308205a5c2e369d50d7f253bec2da85d3783ae87; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:19:00.623Z.