GAA17CA557 · Bellet James J VANS RV 8 UNDESIGNAT
Bellet James J VANS RV 8 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Orange Municipal Airport (ORE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA557
- 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
Bellet James J VANS RV 8 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Bellet James VANS RV 8
- 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
- N184SJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2003)
- 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 downwind
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aviation safety inspector reported that, during a telephone conversation, the pilot reported that, during the climb, he noticed the engine cylinder heat temperature gauge exceed 500°F. The pilot added that he immediately turned back to the departure airport, and while in the downwind for the landing runway, the engine lost power. The pilot further added that the airplane immediately lost altitude and cleared a tree line in the path to the runway but then impacted terrain hard in a base-to-final flightpath near the runway threshold. He added that, when he exited the airplane, he observed an engine cowl plug installed on the right side of the engine cowl and removed it.
The right wing and fuselage sustained substantial damage.
The FAA inspector reported that he traveled to the accident, and while on-site, he observed the left cowl plug melted onto the engine cylinders. He added that the right cowl plug was found on the ground near the airplane.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot did not submit the National Transportation Safety Board Form 6120.1 Pilot/Operator Aircraft Accident/Incident Report.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to remove the engine cowl plugs during preflight, which resulted in excessive engine cylinder head temperatures during climb and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA557
- Event ID
- 20170926X41512
- Case number
- GAA17CA557
- 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: 5c7b9bb5c2a0adf39b448b8e04dc0f6023025132d0f9a5c03578f015dace24d3; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:53:18.787Z.