CEN24LA333 · Zenith Aircraft Company Zodiac CH601 XL
Zenith Aircraft Company Zodiac CH601 XL · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From East Kansas City Airport (3GV) to Marshall Memorial Municipal Airport (MHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA333
- 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
Zenith Aircraft Company Zodiac CH601 XL
- Aircraft type
- Zenith ZODIAC CH601 XL
- 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
- N624RJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East Kansas City Airport (3GV), Grain Valley, MOTo Marshall Memorial Municipal Airport (MHL), Marshall, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2012)
- 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
The pilot stated that, about five minutes after departure in his experimental amateur-built airplane, the engine coolant began to overheat. The pilot reduced engine power hoping that the coolant temperature would decrease or would not increase further; however, the temperature continued to increase, and the pilot chose to land in a field. During the landing, the airplane contacted a drainage ditch, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and the left wing. Postaccident examination of the automotive engine revealed no evidence of coolant leaks, and the coolant overflow tank was full of coolant. The cause of the overheating was not determined during the examination. The pilot stated that he had not experienced any issues with overheating coolant during previous flights.
Probable cause
Overheating of the engine coolant for reasons that could not be determined, which resulted in a precautionary off-airport landing, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA333
- Event ID
- 20240903195043
- Case number
- CEN24LA333
- 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: 5e4350c91cc5966ec4dd2938e60401d3bca3bac159d06618e6d50831cde45b4b; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:13:22.074Z.