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CHI01LA276 · Efaw Casutt Sport Racer

3 Aug 2001 · Shell Lake, WI, United States

Efaw Casutt Sport Racer · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route

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Event

NTSB case
CHI01LA276
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

Efaw Casutt Sport Racer

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
N333GE
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo 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
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 › Flare, misjudged
  • Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

A witness reported that the airplane's engine was "sputtering" and saw the airplane execute a forced landing to an open field. The first responder to the scene reported that there was no fuel in the fuel tank and there was not a strong smell of fuel at the accident site. The first responder reported that the fuel tank had to be removed in order to remove the pilot and no fuel was drained from it. No anomalies were found with the airplane or its engine that could be associated with any pre-impact condition.

Probable cause

The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and the misjudged flare that resulted in a hard landing. A factor to the accident was the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI01LA276
Event ID
20010813X01673
Case number
CHI01LA276
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-08-04.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 7210ce794443cbbff614761dfa54b92ccd5a02c2cbe96e04d06a1b22e45d7889; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:56:31.331Z.