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CHI99LA340 · Navion A

9 Sept 1999 · Utica, NE, United States

Navion A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route

From Lincoln Airport (LNK) to Kearney Regional Airport (EAR)

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Event

NTSB case
CHI99LA340
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

Navion A

Aircraft type
Navion A
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
N4527K
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Lincoln Airport (LNK), Lincoln, NETo Kearney Regional Airport (EAR), Kearney, NE
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 (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

  • Fuel system, pump › Failure, total
  • Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, misjudged

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot said, '... at 4,500 feet, the engine died suddenly and completely. I immediately turned on [the] boost pump, which did no good. I then, turned back 180 degrees and headed for NE23 (Utica, NE) which we had just passed. I notified Lincoln App [approach] of our problem and that re-start procedures didn't work.' The pilot then said, 'I thought I was set up to touch down halfway down the runway, let [the] gear down, got three lights, and then pumped down the rest of the flaps.' The pilot said that he touched down approximately 150 feet from the end of the runway and on rollout the landing gear collapsed due to the presence of '...five feet tall fireweeds.' During a post accident examination of the airplane, the engine driven fuel pump drive pin was found to be sheared. No other preexisting anomalies were found with respect to the aircraft or it's systems

Probable cause

the failure of the fuel pump and the misjudged touchdown point by the pilot. A factor was the high vegetation.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI99LA340
Event ID
20001212X19714
Case number
CHI99LA340
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: 5bff59e02db3327bab1f52d8204174cedc731366741a52f1a5f9cf1d7571560b; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:11:26.492Z.