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WPR22LA133 · Adams Dennis Allen VARIEZE

26 Mar 2022 · Mojave, CA, United States

Adams Dennis Allen VARIEZE · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb

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Event

NTSB case
WPR22LA133
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

Adams Dennis Allen VARIEZE

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
N88KL
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo not recorded
Aircraft age
About 39 years (built 1983)
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
Initial climb
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

  • Aircraft › Aircraft power plant

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot reported that, after takeoff and about 500 ft above ground level, the engine lost total power and he chose to land on the open desert terrain. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with vegetation and the landing gear separated, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage undercarriage.

Examination of the airplane revealed that the air intake duct between the air filter box and the carburetor was damaged during the accident sequence and partially separated from the airplane. The ducting was Sceet tubing that comprised wire coil encased between an inner and outer silicone-impregnated layer. The Sceet tubing was disassembled and exhibited debonding of the inner and outer layers. Oil and debris that was not consistent with the accident sequence were present in the debonded area. It is likely that the loss of engine power was due to the separation of the Sceet tubing inner layer, which then restricted airflow to the carburetor.

Probable cause

The failure of the carburetor intake Sceet tubing, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record WPR22LA133
Event ID
20220328104845
Case number
WPR22LA133
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: 781ddbfe0a7b0a9bfeb80c250482345c8c74ed2660f322f1cd33fd53e1ec3ee0; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:04:34.090Z.