ERA17LA276 · Bradley Roderick W MURPHY RENEGADE
Bradley Roderick W MURPHY RENEGADE · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN) to Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA276
- 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
Bradley Roderick W MURPHY RENEGADE
- Aircraft type
- Bradley Roderick MURPHY RENEGADE
- 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
- N210SQ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN), New Haven, CTTo Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN), New Haven, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1995)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 airline transport pilot stated that this was the first flight after the carburetors were inspected, repaired, and reinstalled on the engine. The pilot stated that he used automotive fuel with 5% ethanol and noted no water in the fuel during his preflight inspection. About 30 minutes into the flight, the engine lost total power, and the pilot made a forced landing to a field. During the landing, the airplane struck powerlines and came to rest in the field, which resulted in substantial damage to the forward section of the fuselage.
Earlier in the year, the pilot had the carburetors inspected and repaired twice as a result of a rough-running engine. Further, in a letter to the maintenance facility dated the month before the accident, he stated that he had the ignition modules replaced, spark plugs replaced, and multiple other engine components inspected because the engine continued to run "rough." The pilot stated that each time the carburetors were inspected, there was evidence of water in the fuel, and one of the fuel jets was corroded.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the left idle mixture screw had a small amount of corrosion on it; otherwise, no anomalies were noted with the engine that would have precluded normal operation. If there was water in the fuel, it could have resulted in the engine running roughly on previous flights and possibly the loss of engine power on the accident flight. However, the pilot did not note water in the fuel during his preflight inspection on the day of the accident. Additionally, engine manufacturer guidance stated that the engine was permitted to operate with up to 10% concentrations of ethanol in the fuel, and the pilot was using automotive fuel with 5% of ethanol, so that likely did not lead to the rough-running engine.
Although the pilot reported various problems with the engine during the airplane's 90 flight hours before the accident, the postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any evidence of malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation; thus, the investigation was unable to determine the reason for the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA276
- Event ID
- 20170815X73929
- Case number
- ERA17LA276
- 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: 6f4c36869ec57c3dfeac5cc5becdf73dd417425c4e0772e65a0fa0535fae4397; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:42:40.013Z.