WPR26LA030 · Rutan Long-EZ
Rutan Long-EZ · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From French Valley Airport (F70) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA030
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Rutan Long-EZ
- Aircraft type
- Rutan LONG-EZ
- 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
- N8183K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From French Valley Airport (F70), Temecula, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1986)
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 20, 2025, about 1603 Pacific daylight time, an experimental amateur-built Rutan Long-EZ, N8183K, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident in Long Beach, California. The pilot was seriously injured, and a pedestrian on the ground was seriously injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, he had flown the airplane from the Compton/Woodley Airport (CPM), Compton, California, to French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta/Temecula, California, as part of a flight of two airplanes. About 1530, the flight of two airplanes departed F70, with an intended destination of CPM. The pilot stated that the flight from F70 to the Corona area was normal and the engine was running smoothly. As he made a turn to the west to follow highway 91, he saw the fuel flow had dropped from 7 gallons per hour to 5 gallons per hour. The engine was still running normally but he radioed the lead airplane regarding the unusual fuel flow. The pilot stated that before reaching Fullerton, fuel flow had dropped to 3 gallons per hour, but the engine continued to run smoothly. The flight of two airplanes continued toward CPM and a few seconds later, the engine “throttled back.” He switched the fuel tank, turned on the electric boost pump, and enriched the mixture. The engine surged and decreased to idle, followed by a total loss of engine power. The pilot attempted several times to restart the engine and diverted to Long Beach Airport/Daughtery Field (LGB), Long Beach, California. The pilot configured the airplane for best glide airspeed and noted it was descending about 700 ft per minute. When he realized that he would be able to make it to LGB, he initiated a forced landing to a nearby park. He stated that as he approached the park, he did not see anyone in the flight path of the airplane. During the forced landing to the park, the airplane struck a pedestrian. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. The airplane was recovered to a secure location for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA030
- Event ID
- 20251022201912
- Case number
- WPR26LA030
- 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. 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: 92773f6b132543677e0aee05964f3e38a50c089be22f946e02179e577f3f4f0e; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:30:06.196Z.