ATL04LA021 · Godwin Lancair 360
Godwin Lancair 360 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Sky Ranch Airport (TN98) to Sky Ranch Airport (TN98)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA021
- 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
Godwin Lancair 360
- Aircraft type
- Godwin LANCAIR 360
- 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
- N797RP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Ranch Airport (TN98), Knoxville, TNTo Sky Ranch Airport (TN98), Knoxville, TN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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)
- 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
- 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
About 10 seconds after takeoff approximately 200 to 300 feet above the ground, the airplane's engine began to run rough. The pilot executed a 180-degree turn back toward the runway, and the engine continued to run rough. The engine then quit completely, and the pilot stated the airplane "dropped like a brick." The pilot stated he "pulled the nose up" and "couldn't see the runway," and he looked out the side window and saw the runway. He stated that within seconds, the airplane collided with the ground, and he blacked out. A certified flight instructor-rated witness observed the airplane on final approach and stated it was "low and slow." The airplane collided with a rock river embankment approximately two feet below the runway elevation. The wreckage came to rest in the grass above the embankment and a few yards short of the runway. Fuel was observed at the accident site. Examination of the engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunction could be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and subsequent inflight collision with rocks during forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA021
- Event ID
- 20031031X01840
- Case number
- ATL04LA021
- 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: ed34ebd14950ddaea7a00e0ec30139892b6515ebac1917c4cd0db2e4ce602628; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:51:37.514Z.