DEN00LA090 · Eagle Aircraft Co. DW-1
Eagle Aircraft Co. DW-1 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Parowan Airport (1L9) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA090
- 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
Eagle Aircraft Co. DW-1
- Aircraft type
- Eagle DW-1
- 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
- N8803H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Parowan Airport (1L9), Parowan, UTTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed Parowan, Utah, with a full load of chemical (165 gallons of Malathion ULV) and full fuel (60 gallons) en route to Boulder, Utah, (total payload approximately 1700 pounds). Towards the end of the aerial application (1,100+ acres), wind velocity began increasing and, noticing that the fuel gauge registered 1/8 to 1/4 fuel remaining, the pilot turned towards Escalante, where he planned to land and refuel. Over Boulder, the fuel gauge indicated empty. The pilot briefly considered landing at Boulder, but decided the unimproved airstrip was inadequate. Five miles from Escalante and 2 miles past Boulder, the pilot realized the terrain ahead was not conducive to a forced landing. He turned back towards the Boulder airstrip. The engine lost power 1/2-mile from the airstrip. Activating the boost pump resulted in 2 seconds of engine power, enough for the airplane to cross the runway threshold. Airspeed had deteriorated to 60 mph and the airplane landed hard. The nose started to 'dip' and the pilot applied full nose up elevator. The airplane continued to nose over, crushing the vertical stabilizer.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to take timely remedial action when he realized a low fuel state. Factors were fuel exhaustion and low airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA090
- Event ID
- 20001212X20980
- Case number
- DEN00LA090
- 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: d67fff90e8902227b1b6c5390eed1b422de72fb6e715b94102be645cd2e5f797; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:53:25.086Z.