CHI07LA080 · Wood Quickie Q-2
Wood Quickie Q-2 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From St Louis Regional Airport (ALN) to Unknown
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA080
- 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
Wood Quickie Q-2
- Aircraft type
- Wood QUICKIE Q-2
- 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
- N89WW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Louis Regional Airport (ALN), Alton/St. Louis, ILTo Unknown
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Loose
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
"THIS CASE WAS MODIFIED AUGUST 19, 2008."
The pilot reported to air traffic control that the experimental amateur built airplane's engine was malfunctioning. A forced landing was made in a corn field, across the corn rows. The airplane nosed over and caught fire. Examination of the engine revealed that both left cylinders had no compression, and the cylinder head bolts were found with zero torque. The lower forward hold down bolt was found backed out 1/8 inch. After removing the cylinder head and barrels for both left cylinders, evidence of severe combustion gas blow by was found on both barrels and both heads. Metal was melted out of the heads at the bottom forward and bottom aft hold down bolt areas. The loose cylinder head barrels would have resulted in a significant loss of engine power. Toxicology testing revealed that the pilot had recently used two different impairing medications, but it is unclear whether the medication use was relevant to the accident sequence.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise due to loose cylinder head bolts/loose cylinders.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA080
- Event ID
- 20070306X00255
- Case number
- CHI07LA080
- 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: e542625d2a0236758bf70156c7dbf2e8d8111a9281c69e195acb302e01904f57; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:48:38.484Z.