ERA21LA009 · Watson Michael A Velocity Elite RG
Watson Michael A Velocity Elite RG · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) to Orlando Executive Airport (ORL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA009
- 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
Watson Michael A Velocity Elite RG
- Aircraft type
- Watson Michael VELOCITY ELITE RG
- 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
- N78BM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FLTo Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 1997)
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental, amateur-built airplane was fueled prior to the cross-country flight. About 20 minutes into the flight, shortly after the airplane descended from 7,000 ft mean sea level (msl) to 3,000 ft msl, the engine lost all power. The pilot verified adequate fuel and that the mixture and throttle controls were in the correct positions; however, he was unable to restart the engine and performed a forced landing into a field. The airplane was substantially damaged when it struck a fence during the landing. Subsequent examination of the engine, fuel system, and ignition system did not reveal any preimpact anomalies. The onboard engine monitor only stored data regarding the duration of and total engine time at the end of the previous flight. Given the available information, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during cruise flight for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA009
- Event ID
- 20201007102107
- Case number
- ERA21LA009
- 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, cause areas. 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: 979b233848d5c05adeaaf026ec6eba68b368fa9350015ca3f77fe1233e2231d7; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:12:03.880Z.