CHI02LA166 · Jacobs Rutan Vari Viggen
Jacobs Rutan Vari Viggen · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during takeoff
From Frasca Field (C16) to Andy Barnhart Memorial Airport (3OH0)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA166
- 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
Jacobs Rutan Vari Viggen
- Aircraft type
- Jacobs RUTAN VARI VIGGEN
- 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
- N915D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frasca Field (C16), Urbana, ILTo Andy Barnhart Memorial Airport (3OH0), New Carlisle, OH
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed when it impacted terrain after a loss of control following a partial loss of engine power during the initial climb from the runway. A witness stated that the airplane had an unusually long takeoff roll, lifting off approximately 300 feet from the end of the 4,000 foot runway, and that once the airplane was airborne, the wings were "rocking and rolling". The pilot transmitted on the radio that he was having trouble climbing. The witness reported that the airplane entered a slow turn to the right with a high angle of attack. The witness stated that the airplane's nose fell to the right and the aircraft impacted the terrain nose first. A fuel leak was found around the accelerator pump housing on the carburetor. The engine was found to be running excessively rich when run on a test stand.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to abort the takeoff. Additional factors included the partial loss of engine power due to an excessively rich mixture as a result of a bad accelerator pump housing seal, and the pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA166
- Event ID
- 20020617X00903
- Case number
- CHI02LA166
- 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: 0daa543626dd56248db5acac5174f15aa7ded840e0ef30dcfb18262b1602952d; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:59:37.684Z.