WPR10LA468 · Giboney Thunder Mustang
Giboney Thunder Mustang · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Reno-Stead Airport (RTS) to Reno-Stead Airport (RTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA468
- 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
Giboney Thunder Mustang
- Aircraft type
- Giboney THUNDER MUSTANG
- 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
- N151G
- Operator
- George A Giboney Jr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reno-Stead Airport (RTS), Reno, NVTo Reno-Stead Airport (RTS), Reno, 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
The pilot reported that he was flying as one of a group of seven airplanes in an air race, and, during lap four, the engine lost all power. The pilot increased altitude to 2,000 feet above ground level and entered the landing pattern but had to extend his downwind to avoid traffic still on the race course. The wind took him further away from the runway than he intended so that when he turned toward the runway, he could not complete the turn to the runway heading, and intercepted the runway on a 50-degree angle at an intersection with another runway. The airplane rolled across the intersection, onto a taxiway, and continued onto a dirt ramp before cartwheeling and coming to rest in the dirt about halfway between the taxiway and the runway. Postaccident examination of the engine found that a connecting rod bearing and two connecting rods in the engine fractured and separated, which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Failure of a connecting rod bearing and two connecting rods, which resulted in a loss of engine power while maneuvering at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA468
- Event ID
- 20100923X82727
- Case number
- WPR10LA468
- 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: c7e586abb80af196ab1d331abbaed70c4a3b101b589ec8b572b96d952fd1fa59; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:19:55.952Z.