CEN17LA117 · Jude Mike C SIDE WINDER
Jude Mike C SIDE WINDER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Leaders Clear Lake Airport (8Y6) to Paynesville Municipal Airport (PEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA117
- 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
Jude Mike C SIDE WINDER
- Aircraft type
- Jude Mike SIDE WINDER
- 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
- N7524V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leaders Clear Lake Airport (8Y6), Clear Lake, MNTo Paynesville Municipal Airport (PEX), Paynesville, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was going to practice touch-and-go landings; during the first takeoff, he smelled engine coolant. As he turned onto the downwind leg, the engine lost total power. Unable to reach the runway, the pilot chose to conduct a forced landing in a field.
Although the pilot stated that he checked the engine coolant level during the preflight inspection, a postaccident examination of the airplane revealed an insufficient amount of coolant in the reservoir. The radiator did not contain any coolant, and no leaks were detected in the coolant system. No other anomalies were noted with the engine. Given the small amount of coolant in the system and the lack of any leaks, it is likely that the pilot did not ensure that a sufficient amount of coolant was in the engine reservoir before takeoff, which resulted in the engine getting too hot and the engine control module shutting down the engine as designed.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, during which he failed to ensure that there was sufficient coolant in the engine reservoir, which resulted in the engine getting too hot and the engine control module shutting down the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA117
- Event ID
- 20170306X21712
- Case number
- CEN17LA117
- 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: 4c27b6376c738a4db5284468d8ae6393460ddebcc5fafb84b7d3dcc2d299769f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:04:11.254Z.