ERA23LA231 · Charles D Walker WALKER CURTISS JN4D
Charles D Walker WALKER CURTISS JN4D · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Madisonville Regional Airport (2I0) to Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA231
- 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
Charles D Walker WALKER CURTISS JN4D
- Aircraft type
- Charles D Walker WALKER CURTISS JN4D
- 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
- N8262
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madisonville Regional Airport (2I0), Madisonville, KYTo Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG), Bowling Green, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2013)
- 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
- Powerplant system/component 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff during a personal flight, the pilot of the experimental amateur-built airplane reported that the engine lost all power suddenly. He was able to briefly restart the engine for several seconds after several attempts, but it lost power gain. He maneuvered for a forced landing to nearby field and the airplane’s wings and fuselage were substantially damaged during the subsequent landing. Postaccident examination of the engine’s ignition system revealed the power supply electrical wire from the distributor to the ignition module was separated at the connection at the distributor. Further, a secondary locking device was not present on the separated electrical connector. Thus, the separation of the electrical wire that powered the ignition module served as a single-point failure that disabled the ignition system.
Probable cause
The separation of an electrical wire that powered the ignition module, rendering the ignition system inoperative, and resulting in the total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA231
- Event ID
- 20230516174539
- Case number
- ERA23LA231
- 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: 6520e5fe5dc9fd9af58ac7ef33e986d212e230e5bedbad26284e56e951410eaa; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:36:41.965Z.