LAX01LA254 · Watkins Velocity
Watkins Velocity · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN) to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA254
- 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
Watkins Velocity
- Aircraft type
- Watkins VELOCITY
- 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
- N222RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), Grand Canyon, AZTo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Separation
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the engine lost power, followed by an off-airport forced landing. The airplane collided with obstacles on the ground. The pilot, who was receiving flight following advisories, reported a loss of engine oil pressure to the air traffic controller. During the flight's diversion to an airport, the engine continued to lose power and the pilot was unable to maintain altitude and reach the divert airport. Local police reported that the pilot subsequently returned to the airplane, chopped it up with an axe, and transported it from the site in a truck. Subsequently, repair personnel examined the engine noting that the number three cylinder head had separated from the cylinder barrel allowing the engine oil to drain from the engine during flight. Engine records indicated the last engine overhaul was January 1988. The pilot reported the engine had 1,275 hours since overhaul with 38 hours since the airplane's last annual inspection in May 2001.
Probable cause
The separation of the number three cylinder head from the barrel resulting in a loss of engine oil during flight. Factors were the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing, and the rough uneven ground of the forced landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA254
- Event ID
- 20010726X01527
- Case number
- LAX01LA254
- 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: e5d2e2d46b3de0ac24a2d343a0faacda8cfbaa6e86925a458bacca41202f801b; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:53:51.657Z.