CHI02LA104 · Hoagland Varieze
Hoagland Varieze · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From John C Tune Airport (JWN) to Griffith-Merrillville Airport (05C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA104
- 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
Hoagland Varieze
- Aircraft type
- Hoagland 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
- N97JW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John C Tune Airport (JWN), Nashville, TNTo Griffith-Merrillville Airport (05C), Griffith, IN
- 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
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Locked
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not possible
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Gary, IN, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane contacted a light pole during a forced landing following a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. The airplane was topped off with fuel (31 gallons) prior to the four leg cross country flight. The pilot reported that on departure for the last leg the airplane veered right during the takeoff roll. Upon reaching his destination airport, he aborted the landing due to a lack of directional control. He then decided to fly to a larger near-by airport. Prior to reaching this airport, the engine lost power. The pilot selected a street on which to make a forced landing. He reported that during the landing the airplane "Veered to the right, having spun clockwise relative to the forward vector. The plane struck a city light pole." The pilot used a fuel burn of 4.5 gallons per hour based on a Continental C-85 engine. However, the engine had been modified with a crankshaft, pistons, and rods for a O-200 engine. The pilot reported that after the accident, he estimated that he burned approximately 50 percent more fuel than he calculated. Following the accident the right brake rotor was found bent and locked against the caliper. The pilot speculated that he may have hit something during the last takeoff roll.
Probable cause
The pilot was unable to maintain directional control of the airplane during the forced landing due to a locked brake. Factors associated with the accident were the pilot's inaccurate fuel consumption calculations which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the light pole.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA104
- Event ID
- 20020416X00518
- Case number
- CHI02LA104
- 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 2002-04-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a8cbe03d2946642077fd94643571b0bd3a69c845350b6a736f6dfae19c1caa82; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:40:18.356Z.