WPR09CA259 · Venus Trike
Venus Trike · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Kuna, ID to Kuna, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA259
- 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
Venus Trike
- Aircraft type
- Venus TRIKE
- Category
- Weight-Shift
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Jon A. Nicholson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kuna, IDTo Kuna, ID
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot of the unregistered two-place weight-shift trike was flying over his ranch when its 65 horsepower engine suddenly lost all power. Although he was able to descend to a successful power-off touchdown, during the landing roll the trike encountered rough/soft terrain, resulting in the overload failure of the nose gear strut. The nose of the trike then dug into the dirt, and its airframe nosed over onto its back. The accident was eventually reported by a family member of the passenger, and the Federal Aviation Administration Inspector who went to the ranch to interview the pilot reported that the pilot had already disposed of the airframe and the engine because of their extensive damage. The pilot said that he had no idea why the engine lost power, and that he completed a preflight inspection prior to the flight. No further determination could be made as to the basis for the engine's loss of power.
Probable cause
The complete loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, and the overload failure of the nose landing gear strut during the roll out over soft/rough terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA259
- Event ID
- 20090525X61647
- Case number
- WPR09CA259
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-05-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b4d22cf99d752715babdfa3e560d13a1049f086039c561a8491b3c50ed317d6e; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:09:58.200Z.