ERA23LA288 · Steen SKYBOLT
Steen SKYBOLT · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA288
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Steen SKYBOLT
- Aircraft type
- Steen SKYBOLT
- 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
- N32WM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1987)
- 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 (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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental amateur-built airplane had not been operated for several years before the pilot purchased it and attempted to return it to a flight-ready condition. The pilot completed two test flights and then completed a circuit in the airport traffic pattern during the third flight. After approaching the runway and flying down its length to assess the airplane’s handling characteristics in ground effect, he attempted to add power with about 500 feet of runway remaining. At that point he realized that he was unable to move the carburetor heat control in order to deactivate it, and lacking sufficient runway to land, he decided to fly the airplane around the traffic pattern about 200 ft above ground level. While maneuvering back to the runway, the engine began to lose power and the airplane’s sink rate increased. The pilot leaned the mixture and changed fuel tanks; however, he could not restore engine power. He then performed a forced landing to a marshy area, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. The wreckage was not recovered from the accident site and could not be examined, therefore a reason for the partial loss of engine power that the pilot reported could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined as the wreckage was not recovered and could not be examined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA288
- Event ID
- 20230705192528
- Case number
- ERA23LA288
- 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, coordinates, 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: 090b57977d0cb0205f0787e4bd96d355073e3eef062c64d637674c3b7ca28dd8; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:48:29.375Z.