WPR10FA473 · Hawker Beechcraft F33 A
John C Gomes III Trustee Hawker Beechcraft F33 A · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10FA473
- 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
- 1 · 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
Hawker Beechcraft F33 A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N1600W
- Operator
- John C Gomes III Trustee
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Phoenix, AZTo Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Phoenix, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a local flight, the airplane departed and climbed to over 8,000 feet mean sea level (msl) on the outbound leg to the north. About 44 minutes into the flight, the airplane began descending after a course reversal to the south on the return for landing. The pilot entered the landing pattern, however, due to multiple airplanes in the traffic pattern he extended downwind, and asked the controller in the air traffic control tower to call his turn to base leg. After getting established on a 3-mile final, the controller notified the pilot that the airplane appeared low. The pilot responded that he was having engine problems and would try to make it to the runway.
Witnesses reported that the airplane was low on final approach and that the engine was sputtering and backfiring. The airplane subsequently collided with a building short of the runway.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage found an engine monitoring unit on board. A download of the data indicated normal readings until the return descent where it appeared the pilot didn't enrich the mixture. As the pilot was turning onto the base leg, data on the engine monitoring system indicated that the engine revolutions per minute (rpm) started a gradual decrease, and the exhaust gas temperatures (EGT) for all six cylinders became erratic. The EGTs for cylinders one, two, and six dropped slightly, and stayed at higher values than the other cylinders. When the EGTs became erratic, the engine was likely losing combustion (power) in some cylinders.
During the postaccident engine examination, the mixture lever was found loose on the throttle shaft but it could not be determined if it was functioning properly at impact. The reason for the partial loss of power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during approach for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10FA473
- Event ID
- 20100927X60228
- Case number
- WPR10FA473
- 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: 9ab20efc410535b27f8e9cc2210ed74b6d98ded8e25948d194f3588e1bb6af74; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:04:03.096Z.