WPR09LA454 · Lewis Jennings NIEUPORT 11
Lewis Jennings NIEUPORT 11 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74) to Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA454
- 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 Jennings NIEUPORT 11
- Aircraft type
- Lewis Jennings NIEUPORT 11
- 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
- N124LH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74), Pahrump, NVTo Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74), Pahrump, NV
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight the engine lost all power. The pilot did not have enough time and altitude to perform an engine restart, and during the subsequent forced landing, the airplane nosed over. The airplane was equipped with an automotive engine converted for aviation use. Post accident examination revealed that the engine's only magneto had failed after its rotor was damaged by a loose high tension lead attachment screw. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, wings, and vertical stabilizer during the accident sequence.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during cruise flight due to a failure of the engine's sole magneto.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA454
- Event ID
- 20090917X13938
- Case number
- WPR09LA454
- 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: 1f9ff03641d92990b1e00167b63b16aeae9b8fdecfb78dc7c64cc910a063eaba; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:18:53.742Z.