LAX01LA108 · Harlow Lancair ES
Harlow Lancair ES · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ) to La Cholla (pvt), AZ (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA108
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Harlow Lancair ES
- Aircraft type
- Harlow LANCAIR ES
- 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
- N350N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ), Casa Grande, AZTo La Cholla (pvt), AZ (no airport)
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Reduction gear assembly, reduction gear bearing › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight the pilot noted smoke coming from the engine cowling. He initiated a precautionary landing at an airport along his route of flight. When the pilot added power to adjust his glide path, he noticed that the engine was responding to throttle input, but the propeller was not. The pilot stated that when he realized he could not make the airport, he directed the airplane to a plowed agricultural field. During the landing sequence, the nose gear "dug in" and collapsed; the airplane was nosed over. The airplane came to rest inverted. The pilot, who is also the builder of the airplane, noted that the propeller drive belt pulley had been heated and distorted, and the drive belt had separated. He also noted what appeared to be spots of molten aluminum near the drive pulley. The pilot stated that the reduction drive bearing and belt had failed for unknown reasons. The FAA approved manufacturer of this particular airplane kit stated that they do not support the use of non-aviation applications, equipment or hardware on the airplane designs they offer. The manuals and plans provided with the kit call for Continental or Lycoming engines only. The accident airplane used a marine version of the General Motors LT-1 350 automotive engine with a non certified V-belt reduction drive unit.
Probable cause
Failure of the propeller reduction drive unit which resulted in drive belt and pulley failure and a subsequent loss of thrust requiring an emergency landing on soft terrain. The reason for the bearing and/or belt failure was not determined. A factor was the loss of propeller thrust, which precluded the pilot from maintaining the proper glide path to the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA108
- Event ID
- 20010308X00562
- Case number
- LAX01LA108
- 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: 9511b46ec0c59c13577302b0b7610f3ac7fb2508d2520e0992b214e7d56331da; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:00:19.881Z.