WPR21LA205 · Boeing A75N1(PT17)
Boeing A75N1(PT17) · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Santa Ynez Airport (IZA) to Santa Paula Airport (SZP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA205
- 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
Boeing A75N1(PT17)
- Aircraft type
- Boeing A75
- 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
- N87WF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Ynez Airport (IZA), Santa Ynez, CATo Santa Paula Airport (SZP), Santa Paula, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 79 years (built 1942)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel equipped airplane reported that, while in cruse flight, about 1,200 to 1,500 ft above ground level (agl), near the Pacific coast, in visible moisture, the engine began to run rough. He applied full throttle and full carburetor heat. The engine initially regained power but again began to lose power at a progressively worsening rate. Concerned that he could not continue to the nearest airport he elected to land on a field. During the landing roll, the main landing gear impacted an irrigation line and the airplane nosed over coming to rest inverted. The rudder was substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Examination of the carburetor heat system by an airframe & powerplant mechanic revealed no mechanical anomalies. Weather conditions reported at the time of the accident were conducive for serious carburetor icing at any power setting.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power, during cruise flight, due to the formation of carburetor ice, which resulted in a forced landing to an open field where the airplane nosed over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA205
- Event ID
- 20210526103148
- Case number
- WPR21LA205
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-05-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7d89c52ae76cc7e5c9eb2db90ec62fd8625e1603f6835529ca05946b6d3aa742; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:05:12.974Z.