CEN16LA035 · Glimn Kitfox 2-3
Glimn Kitfox 2-3 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From Delta County Airport (ESC) to Delta County Airport (ESC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA035
- 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
Glimn Kitfox 2-3
- Aircraft type
- Glimn KITFOX 2
- 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
- N93TG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delta County Airport (ESC), Escanaba, MITo Delta County Airport (ESC), Escanaba, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1988)
- 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 downwind
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern for landing, the private pilot of the experimental amateur-built airplane heard a "clunk" sound from the front of the airplane; however, the propeller continued to rotate and the engine appeared to be operating normally. The pilot continued to the base and final legs of the traffic pattern and attempted to add engine power, but the engine "overreved." The airplane lost altitude as it neared the runway and touched down on the parking apron, then continued into a ditch, where it nosed over and came to rest inverted. A postaccident examination revealed that the propeller gearbox had failed in flight. All of the drive gear and propeller drive teeth were either worn or destroyed, and the gearbox drive gear displayed discoloration and heat signatures consistent with oil starvation. Additionally, there was no usable oil present in the gearbox, and no evidence of an oil leak. Although the airplane owner stated that he had added oil to the gearbox before the flight, it is likely that the flight departed with an insufficient oil supply in the propeller gearbox, which resulted in subsequent oil starvation. When the gearbox failed, the engine continued to operate; however, it ceased to drive the propeller, which resulted in a loss of thrust.
Probable cause
The airplane owner's inadequate maintenance and servicing of the propeller gearbox, which resulted in oil starvation, failure of the gearbox in flight, and a subsequent loss of propeller thrust. Contributing to the outcome was the airplane's low altitude at the time of failure, which precluded the airplane from reaching the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA035
- Event ID
- 20151110X21143
- Case number
- CEN16LA035
- 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: bfc4f0a94eaab5d217e2e5a82fb1076aa3e4472f4aea194f4e4c443d8f09f711; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:57:41.628Z.