IAD02LA028 · Wilburn Jodel F-12
Wilburn Jodel F-12 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Lake Country Regional Airport (W63) to W63
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02LA028
- 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
- 1 · 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
Wilburn Jodel F-12
- Aircraft type
- Wilburn JODEL F-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
- N722Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Country Regional Airport (W63), Clarksville, VATo W63
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a local familiarization flight, just after the airplane had been returned to an airworthy condition after an engine overhaul and propeller replacement. A witness about 1 1/2 miles from the airport reported that the airplane's engine was not running, then appeared restart as the airplane passed by. He subsequently saw the airplane bank sharply to the right, then descend out of view. Another witness, who had just landed, saw the airplane approach the airport, then bank to the right, and disappear below a tree line. He also noted that the airplane "did not seem to have the power it needed to stay airborne." A test run performed on the engine revealed no mechanical deficiencies, and a carburetor icing probability chart indicated a possibility of serious icing at glide power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed after a loss of engine power, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. Also causal, was the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02LA028
- Event ID
- 20020206X00191
- Case number
- IAD02LA028
- 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, coordinates. 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: 1987396704a94c19c393a49f555260209a05dcb5d2314ceec8885c25528556d6; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:13:45.488Z.