CEN21LA100 · Walton Daniel J SONEX
Walton Daniel J SONEX · Accident on approach
From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA100
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Walton Daniel J SONEX
- Aircraft type
- Walton Daniel SONEX
- 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
- N610DJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV), Danville, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot did not provide a statement regarding the accident. Information from the Federal Aviation Administration indicated that, while on the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern for landing, the pilot reduced engine power and the engine lost total power. The airplane continued in a left turn toward the runway while the pilot attempted to restart the engine. The airplane entered a stall/spin and impacted terrain, resulting in substantial damage.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined. Based on the available information, the circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack following a loss of engine power, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information, and the pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack following the loss of engine power, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA100
- Event ID
- 20201228102461
- Case number
- CEN21LA100
- 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: 04bbd0337521c6cdbacd6aa9afd65bcd6fcfae43ca161297e3ef5603b3b43913; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:31:30.534Z.