ERA12LA233 · Boehlke Kevin P 2/3 SCALE JENNY
Boehlke Kevin P 2/3 SCALE JENNY · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Wayne Delp Airport (33NY) to Wayne Delp Airport (33NY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA233
- 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
Boehlke Kevin P 2/3 SCALE JENNY
- Aircraft type
- Boehlke Kevin 2
- 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
- N987KB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wayne Delp Airport (33NY), West Coxsackie, NYTo Wayne Delp Airport (33NY), West Coxsackie, NY
- 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 final
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot built the airplane, which was certificated about 19 months earlier. According to the pilot, the airplane had not flown, and because he wanted to ensure it was flyable again, he conducted a high-speed taxi test with no intent for flight. During the taxi test, the pilot lost control of the airplane, and by the time he had regained control, the airplane was approaching the end of the runway. To avoid the trees, the pilot decided to take off and complete one circuit to a landing. As the pilot turned the airplane onto final approach, he noted a loss of engine power. The pilot then lost control of the airplane, regained it, and attempted to land in a small field as the airplane continued to lose altitude. The pilot avoided a barn, but while doing so, the airplane hit a pine tree, spun around into the direction from which it came, and dropped nose-first to the ground. Postflight examination of the airplane revealed evidence of low power on the 65-horsepower engine at impact, and the left magneto was inoperative. Federal Aviation Administration records indicated that the pilot had previously held a student pilot certificate, which expired in 2001, and the pilot indicated that he had no flight experience in the accident airplane make and model.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot's improper high-speed taxi test, which resulted in a loss of control and the pilot's subsequent decision to take off to avoid trees. Also causal, was an in-flight magneto failure, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inability to maintain control of the airplane due to his lack of total flight experience and his lack of experience in the airplane make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA233
- Event ID
- 20120319X43848
- Case number
- ERA12LA233
- 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: a179d9b2d5b81d3bdc3a59141d2448c245d395f234cc387669849842411dfa39; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:29:04.295Z.