CEN17LA338 · Golden Eagle Chief
Golden Eagle Chief · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Macomb Municipal Airport (KMQB) to Coles County Memorial Airport (KMTO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA338
- 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
Golden Eagle Chief
- Aircraft type
- Golden Eagle CHIEF
- 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
- N68N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Macomb Municipal Airport (KMQB), Macomb, ILTo Coles County Memorial Airport (KMTO), Mattoon, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 88 years (built 1929)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and passenger were conducting a cross-country flight in the experimental, amateur-built airplane. While in cruise flight about 1 hour after takeoff, the engine experienced a total loss of power and the pilot performed a forced landing in a bean field. The airplane nosed over after touchdown, crushing the top of the rudder. The pilot told Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspectors that, before moving the airplane to its hangar following the accident, he drained the fuel tanks because he did not want fuel leaking on the hangar floor. He reported that he drained 13 gallons; this could not be confirmed by the FAA inspectors. A cursory examination of the engine established drive train continuity when the propeller was turned by hand; however, based on the available information, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA338
- Event ID
- 20170906X53835
- Case number
- CEN17LA338
- 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: 25edd41584ac66998cf110635aeb70d276bc617df3f0f00f4e3b5fd160f1e2a1; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:48:10.416Z.