WPR23FA299 · Czech Sport Aircraft SportCruiser
Aviators Flight Academy Czech Sport Aircraft SportCruiser · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23FA299
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
Czech Sport Aircraft SportCruiser
- Aircraft type
- Czech Sport SPORTCRUISER
- 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
- N384SC
- Operator
- Aviators Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2015)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the instructional flight, the student pilot and flight instructor were practicing touch-and-go landings. On the third takeoff, the airplane climbed to about 430 ft above ground level (agl) and, after turning onto the downwind leg, made a 360° turn. During that time, the flight instructor reported to an air traffic controller that they were experiencing some loss of engine power. The airplane continued on the downwind leg and the controller cleared it to land on any runway. The instructor further stated that they were having exhaust gas temperature (EGT) issues. The airplane continued to descend until abeam the runway threshold and then entered a steep left bank at an altitude of about 195 ft agl. The investigation was unable to determine if the pilots banked the airplane to land on a taxilane that was perpendicular to the runway, or if they were turning an early base leg to land on a runway. The bank steepened and the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall, impacting an asphalt ramp in a near-vertical attitude.
The airplane was equipped with an engine monitoring system that would display a flashing warning and sound an audible "EXHAUST GAS TEMPERATURE" alert if the EGT exceeded the maximum EGT for the engine.
The engine was equipped with two carburetors, each containing a piston that controlled fuel delivery. Postaccident examination revealed that both carburetor piston slides were misaligned and the index tabs were not engaged, likely from improper maintenance of the assembly. This misalignment can result in engine vibrations and would likely affect the overall performance of the engine, including EGT fluctuations. The investigation was unable to determine when the carburetors were last disassembled.
Probable cause
The misalignment of the carburetor piston slides, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power, and the flight instructor’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during an emergency landing, leading to an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23FA299
- Event ID
- 20230802192777
- Case number
- WPR23FA299
- 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: 2b4761be2ede62076d183d0b242dc52cb760e94626198d0b17ef9f1912b5ca22; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:04:05.355Z.