LAX08LA177 · Grumman-Schweizer G-164B
Grumman-Schweizer G-164B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Wilder, ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA177
- 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
Grumman-Schweizer G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N48571
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wilder, IDTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was applying fertilizer to a field of hops. After several passes over the field, a total engine failure occurred. The pilot was forced to land the airplane in a small onion field. The pilot said that after touchdown, he "forced the aircraft into the ground to avoid collision with a raised canal." The airplane made "one complete forward flip," which destroyed the tail section, and came to rest nose down. Following its recovery to the operator's facility, the airplane was examined by the pilot and a Federal Aviation Administration inspector. They noted metal chips and oil in the engine exhaust pipes and found all the spark plugs to be contaminated with oil. According to the pilot, these signatures were indicative of a supercharger failure.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of failure of the supercharger. Contributing to the accident was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA177
- Event ID
- 20080618X00880
- Case number
- LAX08LA177
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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 2008-06-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e0f0020dc1037e361099cbff92c40fa03c6e64fdffed173231675bdc923bf87c; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:47:11.346Z.