CEN18LA117 · Black Donald COZY III
Black Donald COZY III · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From Mid Valley Airpark (E98) to Mid Valley Airpark (E98)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA117
- 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
Black Donald COZY III
- Aircraft type
- Black Donald COZY
- 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
- N904DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Valley Airpark (E98), Los Lunas, NMTo Mid Valley Airpark (E98), Los Lunas, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2011)
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After an uneventful 1-hour personal flight in the experimental amateur-built airplane, the pilot was setting up for an approach to the airport when the propeller seized. The pilot attempted to land at the airport but slightly overshot the runway. The landing gear sheared upon touchdown, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and center fuselage section. Examination of the airplane revealed that the propeller gearbox was seized. Examination of the gearbox did not reveal any obvious reason for the seizure. The airplane and engine had been operated about 13.4 total hours since its initial airworthiness certificate was issued about 6 years before the accident. The reason for the gearbox seizure could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
The seizure of the propeller gearbox for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA117
- Event ID
- 20180308X32916
- Case number
- CEN18LA117
- 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: 20689bf55ceb1de922662dddf6fcf28ce6835c907e30a7514f79615e3845406f; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:35:53.785Z.