CEN09CA497 · unknown kit
unknown kit · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Kaplan, LA to Kaplan, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA497
- 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
unknown kit
- 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
- UNK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kaplan, LATo Kaplan, LA
- 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
- 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
The unregistered experimental, single-seat, amateur-built airplane crashed into an open field and came to rest inverted. The wood/fabric airplane had received extensive damage during the impact; it appeared that the airplane collided with terrain at a low speed and a high angle, and fuel was present on site. The private pilot received serious injuries during the crash. The pilot/owner had reportedly purchased the partly completed airplane approximately two years prior to the accident. The accident flight was the airplane's first flight. The pilot pre-flighted the airplane and then taxied up and down a private airstrip located near his residence. The pilot reported to a Federal Aviation Administration inspector that shortly after takeoff the airplane's engine began to "sputter." The pilot then attempted a forced landing to a nearby airstrip; however, the airplane stalled and impacted a field just short of the airstrip.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA497
- Event ID
- 20090806X12010
- Case number
- CEN09CA497
- 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: c84d4a96c5e9db7add9d4589efadb7e7831f3cab246318bee98e2c696b92f500; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:45:31.210Z.