CHI08CA034 · Gluff, Alan Zenair 200
Gluff, Alan Zenair 200 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Greenwood, IN to Columbus Municipal Airport (BAK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA034
- 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
Gluff, Alan Zenair 200
- Aircraft type
- Gluff Alan ZENAIR 200
- 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
- N601AG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenwood, INTo Columbus Municipal Airport (BAK), Columbus, IN
- 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 · climb to 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)
- 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 › Seized
- Lubricating system › Leak
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported that during climb out smoke began coming into the cockpit, the engine lost power, the oil pressure dropped to zero, and then the engine seized. The pilot attempted a landing in a plowed field, during which the nose wheel collapsed and the airplane "flipped over on its back." Oil was found on the bottom of the airplane's fuselage during subsequent examination. The examination failed to reveal the source of the oil leak. The airplane had accumulated 0.6 hours of flight time since having undergone an annual condition inspection performed by the pilot/builder.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to a lubricating system leak for undetermined reasons which resulted in engine seizure, and the unsuitable terrain encountered during the forced landing. Contributing factors were the plowed field and the nose gear failure which resulted in the nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA034
- Event ID
- 20071204X01895
- Case number
- CHI08CA034
- 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: 700ec9726e3de3b1b5f2a63f627da8617a0fe92326912a2c9698efd0d579ec19; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:21:49.511Z.