NYC07LA026 · Vogel Glastar 41
Vogel Glastar 41 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Linden Airport (LDJ) to Toledo Executive Airport (TDZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA026
- 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
Vogel Glastar 41
- Aircraft type
- Vogel GLASTAR 41
- 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
- N441AV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Linden Airport (LDJ), Linden, NJTo Toledo Executive Airport (TDZ), Toledo, OH
- 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)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, design change, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the engine lost power, and the pilot performed a nighttime forced landing to a wooded area. A subsequent examination of the engine revealed a loose timing belt, and the idler pulley, upon which the cam belt would normally have run, was missing. There was also a broken stud in the location where the idler pulley should have been. The loose cam belt resulted in the camshafts being out of timing, allowing the valves to contact each other and bend. The original attach bolt for the missing idler pulley had been replaced by the airplane builder, who was not the current owner, with a 6-inch stud to mount an additional alternator. The mounting stud had been sleeved with a spacer to maintain a mounting distance between the alternator and the engine. The weight of the alternator and its mounting distance from the engine resulted in excessive stress to the mounting stud, which eventually broke.
Probable cause
The builder's improper installation of an additional alternator. Contributing to the accident were the night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA026
- Event ID
- 20061206X01741
- Case number
- NYC07LA026
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-11-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 317ec4e7b414c049b3b64f65173238aaee8675f38a2ea9a05dfc029cd265385f; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:59:35.633Z.