CHI04LA185 · Varga 2150A
Varga 2150A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Winterset Madison County Airport (3Y3) to 3Y3
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA185
- 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
Varga 2150A
- Aircraft type
- Varga 2150
- 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
- N8422J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winterset Madison County Airport (3Y3), Winterset, IATo 3Y3
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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)
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Crew/group coordination › Inadequate
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Visual/aural detection
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructional airplane impacted terrain during a go-around from a simulated forced landing at an uncontrolled airport. The two-place airplane was configured with forward and aft pilot positions. The front position was occupied by the student pilot for the flight. The fuel selector was located in the front cockpit. The certified flight instructor (CFI) stated that he explained to the student pilot that they would just read and point out the emergency checklist items. The student pilot stated that the CFI handed him the emergency checklist to run through an "engine failure landing" during which the student pilot shut off the fuel from both tanks. The student stated that he was not looking outside the airplane while going through the checklist and was not quite through with it when they were almost over the runway. Just as they were touching down, it appeared to the student pilot that a wind gust prevented a "straight lined landing" and they drifted off the runway and over a grass area adjacent to the runway. The CFI applied full power and took back off in an attempt to avoid a bump in the grass area. The student pilot was uninjured and reported that he was using the airplane seat belt and shoulder harness at the time of the accident. The CFI received serious facial injuries after he removed his shoulder harness in flight in order to be able to look at the front cockpit controls following the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The inadequate supervision by the certified flight instructor, fuel starvation, visual/aural detection precluded by the certified flight instructor's seat position, and the inadequate crew coordination of both pilots during the instructional flight. A contributing factor was the low altitude at the time of engine power loss.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA185
- Event ID
- 20040721X01023
- Case number
- CHI04LA185
- 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: 4836feab19dd25be2f47470760a877962a2ea94094c4dee38f2c5fc3e1c3cc83; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:15:06.735Z.