CHI01LA029 · Fowler VARIEZE
Fowler VARIEZE · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Iowa City Municipal Airport (IOW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA029
- 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
Fowler VARIEZE
- Aircraft type
- Fowler VARIEZE
- 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
- N82JF
- Operator
- John M Maher · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Iowa City Municipal Airport (IOW)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 · 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
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane lost engine power during a climb from traffic pattern altitude and the pilot executed a forced landing into a cornfield. The pilot stated, "Because of the low altitude at which the engine ceased operating, I was unable to consider any attempt to make the airport and immediately selected the best available field. The only field long enough contained standing corn about 7' in height. The aircraft was damaged while landing in the corn." The pilot reported, "I discovered subsequently that a fuel-drain petcock had been installed that was of a different type than that which had been in the aircraft previously. It was not appropriate for the location in the aircraft because the petcock position in the Vari-Eze is well up under the cowling and is difficult to observe visually. Draining the fuel sump must be done primarily by feel. The petcock had stuck partially open. I believe the that the header tank was drained through the partially open petcock during the first few minutes of flight."
Probable cause
the inadequate preflight by the pilot which resulted in the fuel drain remaining partially open. Factors to the accident were the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, the partially open fuel drain, the unsuitable terrain for landing encountered by the pilot during the forced landing, and the corn crop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA029
- Event ID
- 20001212X22133
- Case number
- CHI01LA029
- 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: eb2eec6b3a85043b36215fb5eb7cf70ba7d2c93f5b91ff91ff6498b374a0db7d; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:03:23.610Z.