CHI02FA243 · Corken/Guillet Christen Eagle II
Corken/Guillet Christen Eagle II · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR) to Galt Field (10C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02FA243
- 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
Corken/Guillet Christen Eagle II
- Aircraft type
- Corken/guillet CHRISTEN EAGLE
- 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
- N96CG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR), Chicago/Aurora, ILTo Galt Field (10C), Greenwood/Wonde, IL
- 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 › Failure, total
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 reported a loss of oil pressure to the control tower shortly after departure. The airplane was established in cruise flight at 3,000 feet msl, approximately 12 miles north of the airport. The pilot reversed heading in order to return to the departure airport for a precautionary landing. Prior to reaching the airport, the pilot reported a partial loss of engine power and declared an emergency. He selected an off-airport landing site, however prior to executing an emergency landing, the cockpit filled with smoke. At this time the pilot and pilot-rated passenger elected to bail out. The airplane impacted a bean field five miles north of the airport. The pilot and passenger landed nearby and sustained minor injuries. A post-accident engine examination noted wear consistent with oil starvation at the aft (#4) connecting rod bearing journal. The bearing itself was not present. The oil sump contained a significant number of metal fragments. The remaining connecting rod bearings, as well as the crankcase main bearings, exhibited normal wear indications and no evidence of oil starvation. The engine oil pump was found to be undamaged and rotated freely. The pilot stated that the oil quantity was checked during the preflight inspection. The oil filler cap was found secured to the engine during the post-accident examination.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to an engine bearing failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02FA243
- Event ID
- 20020819X01427
- Case number
- CHI02FA243
- 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: 06da2a672dc64af170f7989a00d5dc7dfe5cb201e9e886d15ffe0cd91b3ce5c1; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:38:33.653Z.