CEN15LA308 · Devoe CLIP WING
Devoe CLIP WING · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Ozark Regional Airport (BPK) to Melbourne Municipal John E Miller Field (42A)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA308
- 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
Devoe CLIP WING
- Aircraft type
- Devoe CLIP WING
- 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
- N80917
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ozark Regional Airport (BPK), Mountain Home, ARTo Melbourne Municipal John E Miller Field (42A), Melbourne, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 1994)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The recreational pilot was delivering the airplane to a new owner at a nearby airport. During the delivery flight, the engine lost power. The pilot stated that the airplane was about 1,000 ft above the ground and that he thought the terrain looked suitable for a landing, so he did not deploy the parachute. However, as the airplane continued to descend, the pilot noted that the terrain was covered with tall grass but that, at the airplane's altitude, deploying the parachute was no longer an option. The airplane subsequently impacted rough terrain, and the pilot sustained serious injuries.
An examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact flight control anomalies. Examination of the engine and propeller revealed no preimpact mechanical issues. The fuel filter and carburetor bowl contained some contamination and the temperature and dew point at the time of the accident were conducive to carburetor icing at glide and cruise power settings. In addition, the throttle was found in the "off" position. The investigation could not determine which of these conditions, if any, caused the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence and the postaccident engine examination, which led to a forced landing on unsuitable terrain due to the pilot’s decision not to deploy the ballistic parachute when sufficient altitude was available to do so.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA308
- Event ID
- 20150720X84808
- Case number
- CEN15LA308
- 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: 582960341d01585fcba704a04ae77158150acc8e9af299359ad1c90fa1fdffc8; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:32:57.343Z.