WPR18LA049 · North American NAVION UNDESIGNAT
North American NAVION UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA049
- 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
North American NAVION UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N8884H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), El Cajon, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 70 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 was conducting a cross-country flight. He reported that the takeoff was normal and that, shortly after takeoff, the engine experienced a sudden loss of all power. The pilot banked the airplane to return to the airport but determined that the airplane would be unable to reach the airport. Subsequently, the pilot initiated an off-airport landing to a parking lot, where the airplane landed hard and slid into an embankment near a fence. A postimpact fire ensued.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine found that the fuel manifold valve had thermal discoloration of its housing. The valve was disassembled, and the plunger internal parts (the collar, valve, and spring) were found separated in the plunger cavity. The plunger internal parts likely did not separate during flight; such a condition would have resulted in a rich-running engine, which would not have caused a significant loss of engine power and would have been revealed as a sooty residue on the spark plug electrode areas. The examination of the spark plugs revealed light amounts of deposits, consistent with normal fuel-air mixture and operation. Thus, the separation of the plunger internal parts was consistent with thermal exposure during the postimpact fire.
The melted plastic material found in the fuel selector valve cavity during the disassembly was likely the material that made up the internal control shaft. The throttle control rod end remained secured to the throttle control arm, but the rod end could slide about ½ inch along the bolt that attached the rod end to the control arm. It is unlikely that this movement caused the loss of power during flight given that the pilot did not report an engine control problem.
The examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded continued flight and caused the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA049
- Event ID
- 20171217X35412
- Case number
- WPR18LA049
- 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: 993e8c45a0b982b194055b62aef7133bd327a4af30ecbbf41b88ba9ac6250c5f; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:10:33.801Z.