WPR15LA131 · McCurry Charles P F 1 ROCKET
Steelesky McCurry Charles P F 1 ROCKET · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Prescott, AZ to Sedona Airport (SEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA131
- 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
McCurry Charles P F 1 ROCKET
- Aircraft type
- Mccurry Charles F-1
- 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
- N747MC
- Operator
- Steelesky
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prescott, AZTo Sedona Airport (SEZ), Sedona, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2001)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, on final approach to landing, he added power to maintain the desired glidepath, but the engine did not respond. Despite adjusting the throttle and additional troubleshooting efforts, the pilot noted no response from the engine. He reported that the engine remained running between 1,200 and 1,300 rpm. The pilot initiated a forced landing to a road about 1 mile southwest of the airport, and, during the landing roll, the airplane struck desert vegetation and then came to rest upright. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power during final approach for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examination of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA131
- Event ID
- 20150323X05640
- Case number
- WPR15LA131
- 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: abf199f0826a011c3dfbba66eec88b9a5d678b4e8a13f11321223cb42bbc9bca; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:10:16.479Z.