ERA16LA162 · Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2008
Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2008 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Henderson Field (ACZ) to Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA162
- 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
Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2008
- Aircraft type
- Tecnam P2008
- 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
- N588TA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henderson Field (ACZ), Wallace, NCTo Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT), Oak Island, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight when, according to the pilot, the electronic flight display system "went out." About 10 minutes later, the engine sputtered and lost power. The pilot switched fuel tanks and attempted to restart the engine unsuccessfully then made a forced landing to a field. During the landing rollout, the airplane's nose landing gear struck a ditch and it nosed over, resulting in substantial damage to the wings, vertical stabilizer, and rudder.
Review of recorded data from the airplane’s instrument panel-mounted display system indicated that electrical bus voltage started at 12.6 volts when the system was powered on, decreased for the entirety of the recording, decreasing more rapidly near the end of the flight. The alternator electrical current was zero for the entire recording. Postaccident examination and testing of the airplane’s electrical system revealed that the system was functioning normally; all cautions and warnings, including the “ALT OUT” message, were displayed by the system as required. Additionally, testing of the airplane’s engine and fuel pumps showed they also operated normally.
Given this information, it is likely that for the entirety of the accident flight, electrical power was being supplied by the airplane’s battery alone and was not being replenished by the alternator. While the airplane was equipped with two fuel pumps, both required electrical power for operation. One fuel pump was likely not operating at all for the flight, as it required electrical power solely from the alternator for operation. The remaining fuel pump, which was powered by the battery, likely ceased operation as the battery voltage decreased to a level below that required to sustain it. With both fuel pumps offline, the engine was subsequently starved of fuel, and lost total power. An abbreviated, 6-page checklist was found in the accident airplane. Comparison of the checklist to the published flight manual revealed differences from the Normal Procedures section in the flight manual, including no mention of checking the position of the alternator side of the split master switch on the checklist. It is likely that as the pilot began the flight, he did not activate the airplane’s alternator, nor did he notice the warning messages and voltage highlights that were called out by the airplane’s electronic flight display system during the flight that would have warned him of this omission.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to activate the airplane’s alternator, which resulted in an eventual loss of electrical power to the engine’s fuel pumps, fuel starvation, and a total loss of engine power. Contributing was the pilot’s use of an incomplete checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA162
- Event ID
- 20160419X84044
- Case number
- ERA16LA162
- 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, cause areas. 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: 2e32f6203cca80eb692a74e2188a617f3d401c17dbd9ee79e9cc40863c64e087; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:18:33.788Z.