WPR16FA091 · Nokes Matthew LANCAIR IV P
Nokes Matthew LANCAIR IV P · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to French Valley Airport (F70)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16FA091
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- 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
Nokes Matthew LANCAIR IV P
- Aircraft type
- Nokes Matthew LANCAIR
- 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
- N438Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, CATo French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2000)
- 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 (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
About 15 minutes after departing on the cross-country flight, the experimental, amateur-built airplane experienced a loss of engine power, and the private pilot considered landing on a 550-ft-long airstrip for remote-controlled aircraft. After observing numerous people on and near the runway, he subsequently decided to land on an interstate highway. Upon touching down with the landing gear retracted, the airplane slid into a car parked on the paved shoulder of the highway, fatally injuring one of the car's occupants. Video footage captured by a cell phone inside the airplane showed normal engine indications before the accident. A video taken shortly thereafter did not capture the instrument panel or engine indications; however, the engine could be heard surging.
The airplane was equipped with fuel tanks in the left and right wings, as well as a fuselage tank. The right and left wing tanks each had a capacity of 52 gallons, and the capacity of the fuselage tank was 33 gallons. The fuel system was configured so that the left wing tank connected to the fuselage tank, and the engine would draw from the fuselage tank. The fuselage tank did not have a dedicated fuel quantity gauge; the pilot stated that he knew it was full when the wing tank gauge began to indicate above zero. The pilot stated that before departing on the accident flight, the left fuel tank quantity gauge indicated 1 gallon, which corresponded to 34 gallons available.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. A test run of the engine at low, intermediate, and high power settings was successful.
The fuselage tank was breached during the accident, and an undetermined quantity of fuel leaked out. The gascolator did not contain any fuel, and the line from the gascolator to the engine-driven fuel pump, as well as the fuel inlet line to the fuel manifold, contained no fuel. The lack of fuel in these areas, coupled with the engine surging heard on video, may be an indication of fuel starvation; however, since the investigation was unable to determine the total quantity of fuel on board the airplane, the reason for the loss of power and engine surging could not be determined.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during cruise for reasons that could not be determined because examination of the airplane did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16FA091
- Event ID
- 20160402X40443
- Case number
- WPR16FA091
- 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: 756bc116a860c53a5db210b2332eb8ef184ab49f601e8a0cf7d9658a1c895d01; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:01:33.750Z.