ERA17LA016 · Hatcher Roderick R CH701
Hatcher Roderick R CH701 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Benton Airport (PA40) to Pegasus Air Park (50PA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA016
- 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
Hatcher Roderick R CH701
- Aircraft type
- Hatcher Roderick CH701
- 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
- N3701M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Benton Airport (PA40), Benton, PATo Pegasus Air Park (50PA), Stroudsburg, 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 private pilot of the experimental amateur-built airplane reported that the airplane had been flying uneventfully for about 40 minutes when it lurched and the engine experienced a partial, then total, loss of power. He placed the carburetor heat control to the high setting and established the airplane's best glide airspeed. The pilot then attempted to restart the engine. Although it initially started, the engine would not develop power and shut down after a few seconds. Two additional restart attempts were also unsuccessful, and the pilot subsequently performed a forced landing into trees.
Postaccident examinations of the airframe and engine, which included an engine test run, did not reveal evidence of preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions, and there was sufficient fuel onboard at the time of the accident. Although the weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide power, the engine was operating at a cruise power setting at the time of the power loss and the pilot applied carburetor heat at the first indication of a problem, which did not restore engine power. Therefore, the investigation was unable to determine the reason for the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA016
- Event ID
- 20161017X51539
- Case number
- ERA17LA016
- 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: de58b9cabfb9fa2e49e68dde751981d5239ec2b4d08da0ffd38c37ef81a07433; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:24:23.834Z.