ERA18LA083 · Gregory Newman SONEX TRAINER
Gregory Newman SONEX TRAINER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Carrabelle Thompson Airport (X13) to Carrabelle Thompson Airport (X13)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA083
- 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
- 1 · 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
Gregory Newman SONEX TRAINER
- Aircraft type
- Gregory Newman SONEX TRAINER
- 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
- N543SX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carrabelle Thompson Airport (X13), Carrabelle, FLTo Carrabelle Thompson Airport (X13), Carrabelle, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 private pilot had been having engine issues on his single-engine, experimental, amateur-built airplane and the purpose of the flight was to test the engine. A witness heard the pilot start the airplane's engine, taxi to the runway, and depart without conducting an engine run-up. When the airplane was about halfway down the 4,000-ft-long runway, he heard the engine lose power. The witness looked up and saw the airplane about 100 ft above the runway; it then entered an "aggressive bank" to the left and subsequently stalled and descended "straight down." The airplane came to rest upright in heavily wooded and swampy terrain about 250 yards north of the airport. The airplane was not recovered from the swamp or examined, and the reason for the loss of engine power was not determined.
The pilot succumbed to his injuries after being transported to the hospital. The pilot's admission blood was submitted by the medical examiner for toxicology and the results were negative for all items tested. Postmortem toxicology identified several medications that were likely given as part of postaccident medical treatment, as well as sildenafil, diphenhydramine, and zolpidem.
Though diphenhydramine and zolpidem are impairing drugs, it is unlikely that effects from these medications contributed to the accident circumstances. Given the witness statement, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack during the attempted return to the runway following the loss of engine power, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because the airplane was not recovered. Also causal was the pilot's decision to conduct a low-altitude turn following the loss of engine power, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA083
- Event ID
- 20180205X40240
- Case number
- ERA18LA083
- 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, coordinates. 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: 229adca00245855463af0c5a0a9a83694481f36bfc0496c11df8fab01664d8c2; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:32:05.873Z.