WPR19LA108 · Europa XS
Europa XS · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Yolo County Davis Woodland Winters Airport (DWA) to Yolo County Davis Woodland Winters Airport (DWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA108
- 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
Europa XS
- Aircraft type
- Europa XS
- 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
- N120EJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yolo County Davis Woodland Winters Airport (DWA), Davis/Woodland/Winters, CATo Yolo County Davis Woodland Winters Airport (DWA), Davis/Woodland/Winters, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2012)
- 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
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a local flight, the pilot, who was also the builder of the airplane, heard a noise accompanied by a sudden vibration and partial loss of engine power. He noted that the No. 5 cylinder exhaust gas temperature was abnormally low. He recycled the throttle, but the vibration persisted, and the engine lost total power. The pilot performed a forced landing into a field, during which the airplane nosed over and was substantially damaged. The pilot had removed cylinder Nos. 3 and 5 from the airplane to install new piston rings several months (4 flight hours) before the accident. Postaccident examination revealed internal catastrophic damage to the No. 5 cylinder and engine case, consistent with a No. 5 cylinder wrist pin circlip being improperly installed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly install a wrist pin circlip, which resulted in internal damage to the No. 5 cylinder and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA108
- Event ID
- 20190414X84852
- Case number
- WPR19LA108
- 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: dca165af5c3becc3fc6da4b9b2ab21bd39cae458fd9d809646ed3bf309ac5be4; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:44:07.036Z.