LAX07LA148 · Hill Europa XS
Hill Europa XS · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Livermore Municipal Airport (LVK) to Yosemite, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA148
- 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
- 2 · 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
Hill Europa XS
- Aircraft type
- Hill EUROPA XS
- 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
- N214KS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Livermore Municipal Airport (LVK), Livermore, CATo Yosemite, CA
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, encountered
- 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
Witnesses observed the airplane reach about 300 to 400 feet above ground level (agl) in the initial climb as it approached the departure end of the runway. The airplane then descended about 100 feet as one witness heard the engine begin to sputter, and then lost power. The airplane made a hard left turn and continued to descend while reversing course, consistent with the pilot attempting to return to the runway. As the airplane came close to completing a 180-degree turn, the airplane stalled and dove toward terrain. The airplane impacted in a near-vertical attitude and erupted into flames. The pilot, who was the airplane's builder, had amassed about 300 hours in the accident airplane. The terrain at the end of the departure runway was characteristically flat, stretching over 6,500 feet beyond the runway, and consisted of a golf course and open fields. Investigators found no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures during the examination; however, the extremely impact damaged and thermally consumed wreckage precluded many components and systems from being inspected. An article in the EAA Sport Aviation newsletter detailed the flight characteristics of an Europa that was configured similar to the accident airplane. In pertinent part, it stated that stalls, both with level flight and idle power, are abrupt with a 5- to 10-degree nose drop accompanied by a 5-degree right wing drop. The article reported that there is virtually no traditional stall warning, such as airframe buffeting.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for an undetermined reason during the initial climb, and the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed while attempting a return to runway maneuver, which resulted in a stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA148
- Event ID
- 20070627X00820
- Case number
- LAX07LA148
- 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: 3045d3d134b18833c92ce4c2e03ff3680d2d9f428c36f8dd65beb34012187f1f; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:32:53.929Z.