ERA19LA029 · Diamond DA20 C1
Falcon Aviation Academy Diamond DA20 C1 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Jackson County Airport (24A) to Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA029
- 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
Diamond DA20 C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA20
- 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
- N653DC
- Operator
- Falcon Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson County Airport (24A), Sylva, NCTo Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN), Athens, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2001)
- 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 (partial)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the airplane was in cruise flight about 6,500 ft mean sea level when the engine lost partial power. The pilot stated that he selected a field for a forced landing because no airport was within gliding distance. During the descent, the pilot's remedial actions to restore engine power were unsuccessful, so he declared an emergency over the radio and secured the engine before the off-airport landing. The airframe sustained substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage during the landing.
After the accident, several engine starts were attempted on the airframe, but each was unsuccessful. The engine was removed and shipped to the manufacturer, where an engine start was attempted in a test cell. The engine ran roughly and would not run continuously. Troubleshooting was performed, and internal engine timing and ignition timing were confirmed. Ultimately, both magnetos and both ignition harnesses required replacement to achieve a successful engine run. Disassembly of the right magneto revealed excessive wear, which rendered it inoperative. The left magneto required cleaning of the points to operate, and both ignition harnesses displayed damage due to overtightening of restraint clamps, which resulted in ignition "leaks" and intermittent spark at the spark plugs. It is likely that the combination of all of the discrepancies of the ignition system ultimately resulted in the engine's partial loss of power during the accident flight.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to multiple discrepancies of the engine's ignition system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA029
- Event ID
- 20181028X03906
- Case number
- ERA19LA029
- 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: 7bc6091188cbbf3f13b4223c883e235221e6bb9e270a27f0ccede7ff4c9fce77; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:23:26.728Z.