WPR21LA294 · Kuykendall Charles LANCAIR IV
Kuykendall Charles LANCAIR IV · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to RDV · Redmon, OR
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA294
- 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
Kuykendall Charles LANCAIR IV
- Aircraft type
- Kuykendall Charles LANCAIR
- 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
- N26PD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo RDV · Redmon, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1996)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was making a cross-country flight in the airplane. While still in the initial climb, shortly after he had switched on the electric fuel boost pump at 10,000 ft mean sea level as recommended, the engine began to sputter, and he saw smoke coming from the right side of the instrument panel. The engine stopped producing power, and the pilot turned towards a highway for an emergency landing. The airplane lost electrical power, and the pilot was unable to lower the landing gear. During the gear-up landing on the highway, the propeller struck the ground, which resulted in the airplane veering to the left off the pavement into the center dirt median strip. The pilot opened the canopy and saw fuel spilling out of the left wing. He exited the airplane, and a short time later, the airplane burst into flames.
The airframe was destroyed by fire damage. Examination of the engine did not reveal evidence of any mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire due to an undetermined electrical malfunction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA294
- Event ID
- 20210729103581
- Case number
- WPR21LA294
- 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: 3e59548268615c5e252c3bbe528a955c46280e1bed976494d63a6c9fcb66bcdb; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:20:50.807Z.