CHI06LA164 · Miller Zenair Cricket MC-12
Miller Zenair Cricket MC-12 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (LXT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA164
- 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
Miller Zenair Cricket MC-12
- Aircraft type
- Miller ZENAIR CRICKET MC-12
- 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
- N36CZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (LXT), Lee's Summit, MOTo not recorded
- 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 pattern final
- 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
- 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/spin
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- 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
The twin engine airplane descended to ground impact following a loss of engine power while operating in the traffic pattern. Witnesses reported that the pilot took off and remained in the traffic pattern. He executed a low pass over the departure runway about 200 feet above ground level. The witnesses reported that during the low approach, the engines did not sound normal and described them as "out of synch" and "missing." One witness stated, "it sounded like one engine was spitting and coughing. . . . [The pilot] turned a left crosswind just south of runway 11/29 and shortly after, it sounded like the engine quit. One engine was still running though." The witnesses stated that the airplane turned to a left crosswind and subsequently left downwind. They noted that the airplane appeared to be descending as it was established on downwind. One witness stated that as the airplane reached a point abeam the airport terminal building on downwind, it "pitched up and snapped hard to the right and then went into a downward spiral." Another witness stated that "as the plane got lower, it was just above the tree line but still in sight. Suddenly the aircraft rolled over and headed straight for the ground." A post accident inspection revealed no anomalies consistent with a pre-impact failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while operating in the traffic pattern after the loss of power in one engine, resulting in an inadvertent stall/spin. An additional cause was the loss of engine power in one of the two engines for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA164
- Event ID
- 20060630X00860
- Case number
- CHI06LA164
- 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: b5aeb62ad7a276941a059d3a2276f7cbf6b39e3801d45f991a814f44791a1c8c; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:16:57.375Z.