FTW03LA091 · Gilbertson Zodiac CH601HDS
Gilbertson Zodiac CH601HDS · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Chattanooga Sky Harbor Airport (92F) to Chattanooga Sky Harbor Airport (92F)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA091
- 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
Gilbertson Zodiac CH601HDS
- Aircraft type
- Gilbertson ZODIAC CH601HDS
- 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
- N474BG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chattanooga Sky Harbor Airport (92F), Chattanooga, OKTo Chattanooga Sky Harbor Airport (92F), Chattanooga, OK
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a test flight on the morning of the accident, the engine was running rough; however, the pilot landed the airplane without further incident. The pilot removed the carburetor screen, cleaned the debris from the screen, and reinstalled the screen. During the accident flight, the oil and water temperature indicated 205-210 degrees, and the flight was returning to the airport. At an airspeed of 70 knots and an altitude of 500 feet agl, there was a total loss of engine power. The pilot performed the emergency landing procedures; however, he was not able to turn the airplane into the wind due to an unsafe landing area east of the airport traffic pattern for the runway. The pilot landed the airplane with a right quartering tailwind (25 knots, gusts 30 knots) in a field. During the landing roll, the nose landing gear struck a berm, the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane structure twisted as the airplane came to rest. The reason for the loss of engine power was not determined. The pilot reported the winds were from the southwest at 25 knots with gust to 30 knots. The airplane had accumulated 27.6 hours of the required 40 hours of flight time under the operating limitations for the homebuilt airplane.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for an undetermined reason. Contributing factors were the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing and the unfavorable wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA091
- Event ID
- 20030203X00146
- Case number
- FTW03LA091
- 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: 15d7b3393be6f7d31b68e7c231a1798ee5837315a5098213af55afdbedb92bd3; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:37:27.913Z.