WPR13LA389 · Champion 8KCAB
Champion 8KCAB · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA389
- 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
Champion 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Champion 8
- 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
- N413JJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HI
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2009)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, shortly after he completed an aerobatic maneuver and while the airplane was in cruise flight about 4,000 ft above ground level, the engine lost power. The pilot initiated a turn back toward the nearest airport. When he realized that the airplane would be unable to reach the airport, he initiated a forced landing in a field. During the landing roll, the airplane nosed over and then came to rest inverted. Postaccident examination of the airplane the following day revealed that there was fuel in the header tank, but the quantity of fuel in the main tanks could not be determined because the airplane was inverted. Several days after the accident and during the airplane recovery, a small amount of fuel was observed in each main tank. It could not be determined if fuel had leaked from the tanks while the airplane was inverted. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The engine was test run at various power settings with no anomalies noted.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine and airframe did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA389
- Event ID
- 20130828X00254
- Case number
- WPR13LA389
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: af6796ffc7c73e3e0d05de6f8a93b5692ee149ecca507719742a8cb26a1d0be6; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:39:00.021Z.