WPR17LA126 · Hy-Tek Hurricane
Hy-Tek Hurricane · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Redcrest, CA to Redcrest, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA126
- 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
- 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
- Unknown
Hy-Tek Hurricane
- Aircraft type
- HY Tek HURRICANE
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Redcrest, CATo Redcrest, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot was returning from a 20-minute flight in an unregistered amateur-built airplane when a witness heard the engine sputtering. The witness reported that the engine quit shortly thereafter and that the airplane subsequently nosed down and collided with the river shoreline.
Law enforcement personnel reported that the airplane wreckage had been moved before their arrival at the accident site. The pilot's body was not within the wreckage when they arrived, and an extensive search was initiated. The body was located several days later downstream of the accident site.
The accident was not reported to the National Transportation Safety Board until several weeks after the wreckage had been recovered to the pilot's residence. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that airframe and engine components had been removed and disassembled postaccident and prior to an inspection. Consequently, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
A family member reported that the pilot had accumulated about 2 hours of total flight experience in the accident airplane make and model. The investigation did not identify any other flight time information, therefore the pilot's ability to respond to an emergency, such as a loss of engine power, could not be determined.
Toxicology testing on the pilot's specimens was positive for methamphetamine and ethanol. The effects of methamphetamine "high" and "crash" are impairing; thus, pilots are not permitted to operate aircraft while using methamphetamine. Although ethanol can be produced postmortem, the ethanol detected in the pilot's specimens had likely been ingested given the statement from the pilot's wife that he was under the influence on the day of the accident. Therefore, the pilot was likely impaired by the effects of methamphetamine and alcohol, which contributed to the pilot's ability to maintain airplane control following the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The noncertificated pilot's impairment from methamphetamine and alcohol use, which precluded the pilot from maintaining control of the airplane after a loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA126
- Event ID
- 20170615X73758
- Case number
- WPR17LA126
- 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, coordinates. 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: b737e0ef0c90107d9702e0e79ccad1cffb8a3ae034495bb3d4068b9f90c00082; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:04:23.101Z.