CHI00LA201 · Witlock CIRCA-NIEUPORT 12 CIRCA-NIEU
Witlock CIRCA-NIEUPORT 12 CIRCA-NIEU · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Peotone, IL (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA201
- 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
Witlock CIRCA-NIEUPORT 12 CIRCA-NIEU
- Aircraft type
- Witlock CIRCA-NIEUPORT 12
- 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
- N317LS
- Operator
- Karl Henning
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peotone, IL (private airstrip)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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Carburetor heat control › Not installed
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a statement by the pilot, 'Departed runway 27 for general test flight. Made several circuits of the pattern. Left the pattern to climb up higher. Upon turning to return to the airport I experienced a partial loss of power. Unable to hold altitude and attempting to get back to the approach end of 27, I landed in a corn field.' Using the Midway Airport temperature of 72 degrees and a dew point of 68, the aircraft was flying in the possibility of 'serious icing' on the Icing Probability Chart. A post accident investigation found that the aircraft had no provisions for the removal of carburetor ice. The pilot indicated that he had two hours in the accident aircraft's make and model.
Probable cause
the carburetor icing conditions and the fact that the aircraft was not equipped with carburetor heat protection. A factor to the accident was the crops.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA201
- Event ID
- 20001212X21392
- Case number
- CHI00LA201
- 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: 029e4ec01ecebc21430c5a3c04e6de14e36f82afe05ca2df1a9771da3ccab6b6; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:09:35.593Z.