CEN17LA327 · Greene R/Greene S RANS S 17
Greene R/Greene S RANS S 17 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Erie Municipal Airport (EIK) to Erie Municipal Airport (EIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA327
- 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
Greene R/Greene S RANS S 17
- Aircraft type
- Greene R/greene RANS S 17
- 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
- N117BE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, COTo Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, CO
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot of the experimental amateur-built airplane reported that, during the initial climb, the engine did not seem to be producing full power, so he attempted to reject the takeoff and land back on the runway. During the landing, the wind pushed the airplane to the right, the left wing rose, and the right wing contacted the ground. The airplane spun around and came to rest upright. The pilot had not flown since 2010 and had no more than 2 hours of recent flight experience. The pilot stated that he had checked the spark plugs before the accident flight and thought that he did not properly install the plugs; however, following the accident, the pilot ran the engine several times and the engine appeared to produce power.
The wind conditions at the time of the accident would have resulted in a left quartering tailwind during landing. This, coupled with the density altitude of about 7,300 ft, would have significantly decreased the airplane's performance and could have given the perception to the noncertificated, inexperienced pilot that the engine had experienced a partial loss of power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control following a rejected takeoff for a perceived loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of training and experience in the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA327
- Event ID
- 20170824X93431
- Case number
- CEN17LA327
- 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 2017-08-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2a433c4362efecfd65680a390328a0d03902b65cf1b740a992da27762c88d63b; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:45:26.928Z.