ERA19LA177 · Zenith CH750 STOL
Zenith CH750 STOL · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From Savannah Hardin County Airport (SNH) to Savannah Hardin County Airport (SNH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA177
- 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
- 0
- 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
Zenith CH750 STOL
- Aircraft type
- Zenith CH750
- 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
- N750GZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Savannah Hardin County Airport (SNH), Savannah, TNTo Savannah Hardin County Airport (SNH), Savannah, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2018)
- 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
- Electrical system 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal flight in the experimental amateur-built airplane, and after departing the local area, noticed the DC electrical bus voltage decrease from 13.6 volts to 12.5 volts. He initiated a turn back to the airport and about 2 minutes later, the DC bus voltage decreased to 0 volts and the engine stopped producing power. The pilot performed a forced landing to an open field, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage. The airplane was constructed such that the engine was electrically dependent on a single alternator and a single battery to provide required electrical power to operate the fuel pump and ignition systems. Examination of the airplane revealed that the alternator circuit breaker, which was located behind the instrument panel and out of view of and inaccessible to the pilot, was tripped. Based on the pilot's description of events, it is likely that an electrical load drew an excessive current through the alternator circuit breaker, which resulted in it tripping and interrupting the electrical power supplied by the alternator. The engine's electrically-operated fuel and ignition systems continued to function on battery power for about 2 minutes before the engine stopped running. The pilot's reported inability to restore electrical power (and subsequently, engine power) at a low altitude resulted in the forced landing.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to a loss of all electrical power. Contributing to the accident was the inaccessible placement of the alternator circuit breaker and the construction of the airplane without a backup electrical source.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA177
- Event ID
- 20190519X90420
- Case number
- ERA19LA177
- 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: ac692e8c1a43c6580df515473768a5f0490c17fb5cf3db31ccb093ff23a11468; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:01:33.829Z.