WPR13LA161 · Owens VELOCITY 173
Owens VELOCITY 173 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3) to Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA161
- 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
- 0
- 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
Owens VELOCITY 173
- Aircraft type
- Owens VELOCITY 173
- 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
- N33SV
- Operator
- Christopher D Mager · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3), Queen Creek, AZTo Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3), Queen Creek, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after about 30 minutes in cruise flight, the engine began to run roughly, followed by a loss of power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine twice but was unsuccessful. He then initiated an emergency landing on a dirt road. During the landing roll, the left wing struck an irrigation pipe, which resulted in the airplane departing the road and coming to rest in a field.
A postaccident engine examination revealed that the engine was modified with an Ellison throttle body under an experimental, amateur-built airworthiness certificate. Attempts to run the engine with the Ellison throttle body installed were unsuccessful. Once the throttle body was removed, the engine successfully started. An examination and teardown of the throttle body did not reveal any anomalies that would have caused the throttle body to malfunction.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the throttle body revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA161
- Event ID
- 20130325X91511
- Case number
- WPR13LA161
- 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: be998fda82f81f9f6237664125cbdf61e19640c2ba4c8a0648e682c6289a039e; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:09:37.157Z.