CHI00LA004 · Draper RANS S-10
Draper RANS S-10 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Lloyd Stearman Field (1K1) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA004
- 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
Draper RANS S-10
- Aircraft type
- Draper RANS S-10
- 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
- N7868G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lloyd Stearman Field (1K1)To 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness saw the airplane for about one or two seconds before the airplane went behind a 20 to 30 foot crest in the road. The airplane's altitude was about 150 feet above the ground and it was in a nosedive. The airplane impacted the ground in about a 30 degree nose down attitude. The engine compartment, cockpit, and left and right wings were consumed by fire after impact. The empennage remained intact and attached to the fuselage. The inspection of the wreckage revealed that all flight controls were attached to the airframe and all cables were still intact. Continuity was established to all flight controls. The carburetors and ignition system were consumed by fire. The inspection of the engine did not reveal any pre-impact anomalies. The propeller blade that was found forward of the engine was separated from the hub and it exhibited the following characteristics: no chordwise scratching, no dents or nicks in the leading edge, and no blade twist. The composite blade strands that were attached to the blade hub were separated and bent forward of the hub, and not angled opposite the plane of rotation. The pilot had flown the airplane one hour within the last five months. The toxicology report indicated the pilot had 10 times the normal dose of ephedrine detected in the blood. Ephedrine is used as a stimulant, weight loss product, decongestant, or asthma medication.
Probable cause
the pilot inadvertently stalled the airplane. Factors relating to the accident was the undetermined loss of power and the pilot's lack of recent experience in the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA004
- Event ID
- 20001212X19917
- Case number
- CHI00LA004
- 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: 318c847072da2bb6f32704941cb4229199d788113ab0c32cc1c3fa2d1ba6228a; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:44:11.439Z.