ERA16LA285 · Shaffer Donald ARION LIGHTNING
Shaffer Donald ARION LIGHTNING · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From New Garden Airport (N57) to New Garden Airport (N57)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA285
- 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
Shaffer Donald ARION LIGHTNING
- Aircraft type
- Shaffer Donald ARION LIGHTNING
- 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
- N270J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Garden Airport (N57), Toughkenamon, PATo New Garden Airport (N57), Toughkenamon, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2010)
- 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 base
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
The sport pilot, who was also the builder of the experimental, amateur-built airplane, stated that, as he was preparing to land the airplane, he reduced the power to idle while turning onto the left base leg, and the engine stopped producing power. The pilot tried to restart the engine several times, but he realized that the airplane was not going to reach the runway, so he attempted to land in a field. The airplane struck a power line and landed hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings, firewall, and fuselage.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although the engine data for the last few minutes of the flight were consistent with a loss of engine power as reported by the pilot, no anomalies were noted that explained the power loss. Therefore, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because examination of the engine did not reveal evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA285
- Event ID
- 20160808X95044
- Case number
- ERA16LA285
- 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: 6bb7b4325d8ed8649177b6b4029d648af0bb3652fb43e80792cc502cf8d3664a; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:08:04.568Z.