ERA19LA253 · Velocity XL-5
Velocity XL-5 · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM) to Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA253
- 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
Velocity XL-5
- Aircraft type
- Velocity XL-5
- 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
- N735D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM), Kissimmee, FLTo Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26), Sebastian, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2016)
- 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
- 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
Shortly after takeoff, when the airplane was at an altitude of 2,000 ft, the engine and electrical system failed simultaneously. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and made a forced landing to an open field, during which the airplane flipped over and sustained substantial damage to the airframe and wings. The airplane wreckage was not located until about 4 hours and 25 minutes after the accident. The airplane’s engine was equipped with a dual electronic ignition system that required electrical power to operate. The pilot, who was also the builder, had wired the airplane’s electrical system, which was routed through a 24v battery, including the dual electronic ignition system. Postaccident examination revealed that the lugs that connected the positive and negative leads of the airplane’s electrical system to the 24v battery were not crimped properly and that the leads had separated from their lugs, which resulted in the complete loss of electrical and engine power. The airplane’s 406-MHz emergency locator transmitter (ELT) triggered on impact, and a beacon alert was sent and was received by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC). The AFRCC called the pilot’s cell phone twice shortly after the accident, but the phone had been displaced during the accident sequence, and the pilot was unable to retrieve it to answer. The pilot’s daughter did not receive a call from the AFRCC even though she was listed as an emergency contact on his ELT registration form. A review of AFRCC’s response to the accident revealed that the on-duty controller attempted to locate the beacon and initially determined that the airplane was most likely airborne with an active ELT and closed out the incident. However, after several hours had passed, the controller observed the beacon alerts becoming more concentrated and contacted law enforcement, who located the airplane within 45 minutes. The AFRCC reported that they handled 38 other incidents that day and that the controller was in his first phase of training. However, they indicated that they would use this incident as a training aid for similar cases in the future.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly secure the airplane electrical system’s positive/negative leads to the 24v battery, which resulted in a total loss of electrical and engine power in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA253
- Event ID
- 20190822X70607
- Case number
- ERA19LA253
- 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: 7b247a25deae71b0e6784de09462a33bd7afdc6bddec0ce9bc0a6eb51bdb13d9; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:51:15.974Z.