WPR10LA454 · Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA-300
Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA-300 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Sierra Vista Municipal Airport / Libby Army Air Field (FHU) to Sierra Vista Municipal Airport / Libby Army Air Field (FHU)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA454
- 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
Extra Flugzeugbau Gmbh EA-300
- Aircraft type
- Extra EA-300
- 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
- N102EX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sierra Vista Municipal Airport / Libby Army Air Field (FHU), Sierra Vista, AZTo Sierra Vista Municipal Airport / Libby Army Air Field (FHU), Sierra Vista, AZ
- 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 · aerobatics
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had flown the airplane about 6 hours with the recently overhauled engine. During the accident flight, he performed touch-and-go landings and then went to an aerobatic area to perform flight maneuvers. During the maneuvers, he noted that the oil pressure was initially 65 to 70 psi, dropped to about 40 psi, and returned to 70 psi when the airplane was in inverted flight. He then did left and right 90-degree inverted turns. As he completed a steep turn, he noticed that the oil pressure was at 0 psi. Before he could react, the engine seized and stopped. The pilot made a successful landing on a road but had to negotiate around a 45-degree left bend; as the airplane rounded the curve, a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction collided with the left wing. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the connecting rod near cylinder Nos. 5 and 6 had failed when the engine seized. Further examination found that the shuttle valve, which controlled oil flow while the airplane was in inverted flight, had a triangular shaped shard of metal wedged under the remaining steel ball. This kept the ball from moving its full travel to the shut off position, resulting in a loss of lubrication to the engine.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to metal debris contamination of the inverted oil system shuttle valve, which resulted in a disruption of oil flow and subsequent oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA454
- Event ID
- 20100913X24858
- Case number
- WPR10LA454
- 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: 4e8e3386fcd2e0ca7ba9907dc0aecdbf25d0efd4c25861ea993de923c829b14f; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:10:42.885Z.