ENG15RA030 · PAC 750XL
PAC 750XL · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG15RA030
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
PAC 750XL
- Aircraft type
- Pac 750
- 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
- ZK-SDT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On 7 January 2015, a Pacific Aerospace Limited 750XL airplane, registration No. ZK-SDT, while performing commercial skydiving operations, experienced an engine failure while climbing through approximately 3000 feet, after take-off from Taupo Aerodrome in the central North Island, New Zealand. It was reported that sparks and flames were emitted from the exhaust and cowls and then shortly afterwards the engine stopped running. The skydive passengers departed the aircraft at altitude and all arrived safely on the ground. The pilot also safely departed the aircraft before it crashed into a lake. The aircraft engine was subsequently recovered and sent to Pratt & Whitney Canada Service Centre for investigation in the presence of a Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the government of New Zealand. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
NEW ZEALAND The Chief Executive Officer Transport Accident Investigation Commission 11 Cigna House 40 Mercer Street P.O. Box 10-323 Wellington 6143 New Zealand
Tel.: (64) 4-473-0199 (24 hours) (64) 4-473-3112 E-mail: inquiries@taic.org.nz Fax: (64) 4-499-1510 AFTN: NZHOYAYX Cable: CIVAIR NZ Website: http://www.taic.org.nz
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information obtained for, or released by the Government of New Zealand.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG15RA030
- Event ID
- 20150820X31707
- Case number
- ENG15RA030
- 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: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e0b1069c7cd80d7a4423009b98a24fceee1adda37de700c13a908a6d9d9478dd; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:42:06.461Z.