ERA17LA247 · Aeroprakt A 20 VISTA CRUISER
Aeroprakt A 20 VISTA CRUISER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV) to Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA247
- 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
Aeroprakt A 20 VISTA CRUISER
- Aircraft type
- Aeroprakt A-20
- 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
- N55US
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), Shirley, NYTo Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), Shirley, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2006)
- 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 final
- 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 power plant
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he was conducting touch-and-go landings and that, while on final approach, the experimental, light sport airplane encountered a downdraft, and the engine lost total power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine or glide the airplane to the runway, and it impacted trees.
The engine was test run successfully several times, and no anomalies were noted. The engine's choke control was located near the throttle lever. During the test runs, the engine lost total power if the choke control was moved about halfway (1 inch). It is likely that the pilot's hand was on the throttle lever and that it inadvertently bumped the choke control during the downdraft encounter, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent activation of the engine's choke control during a downdraft encounter, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA247
- Event ID
- 20170716X21221
- Case number
- ERA17LA247
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-07-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3968e6f6eecd2e49b4de7b333a7f7064a77fd440598efbe6f038f8b6dd474f9f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:32:50.526Z.