ERA09LA446 · Lobb Kenneth CH 701
Lobb Kenneth CH 701 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT) to Smyrna Airport (MQY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA446
- 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
Lobb Kenneth CH 701
- Aircraft type
- Lobb Kenneth CH-701
- 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
- N75644
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT), Murfreesboro, TNTo Smyrna Airport (MQY), Smyrna, TN
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of the experimental amateur-built airplane, about 15 minutes after departing the airport, and while flying approximately 1,000 feet above ground level, the engine lost power. The pilot immediately established the airplane in a glide, and began looking for a suitable landing site. He asked the passenger to attempt an engine restart, but the passenger was not successful. The pilot subsequently performed a forced landing to a pasture, which caused the nose landing gear to buckle and resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the alternator drive gear had sheared and jammed the accessory drive gears. Additionally, the alternator drive gear retaining nut did not have a cotter pin locking device installed, likely allowing the nut to back off. The airframe had accumulated 43 total hours since being assembled and the engine had accumulated 46 total hours since the most recent overhaul.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the improper installation of the alternator drive gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA446
- Event ID
- 20090807X75015
- Case number
- ERA09LA446
- 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. 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: a1080778ab90241b66341ac73e5d44e25977e8b55418ffffe0f69b7e167ca231; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:46:10.354Z.