CEN09CA423 · Lewis Keith O VIGGENITE
Lewis Keith O VIGGENITE · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS) to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA423
- 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
Lewis Keith O VIGGENITE
- Aircraft type
- Lewis Keith VIGGENITE
- 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
- N20VV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MOTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MO
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
The pilot reported that while in the airport traffic pattern, the airplane's engine lost power just after completing a turn from the crosswind leg to the downwind leg of the pattern. At the time of the engine failure the airplane was about 1,100 feet above mean sea level (approximately 630 feet above ground level). The pilot reported that the airplane abruptly pitched up and he attempted one restart to no avail. He reported that the airplane continued to decelerate with full forward stick pressure. In order to keep the airplane from stalling the pilot rolled the airplane inverted and pulled back on the stick to lower the nose of the airplane. He then rolled the airplane back upright and pulled back to arrest the descent before contacting trees. The pilot reported that the homebuilt airplane is an all aluminum version of the Vari-Viggen design and believed that the pitch up following the loss of power was due to the high thrust line location of the pusher engine configuration. The airplane was powered by a converted Mazda rotary automobile engine. An examination of the engine and fuel system revealed sufficient fuel and fuel within the fuel line to the carburetor. A visual examination of the engine revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for unknown reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA423
- Event ID
- 20090709X40901
- Case number
- CEN09CA423
- 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: 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: f5ef4d87f44897038659f69d0885578d8b6e491ab3ef65ee17fe5552cdc14abe; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:46:37.174Z.