ERA26LA198 · North American NAVION
North American NAVION · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Orange Municipal Airport (ORE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA198
- 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
- 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
North American NAVION
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N8618H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 79 years (built 1947)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On May 1, 2026, about 1910 eastern daylight time, a North American Navion, N8618H, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near New Salem, Massachusetts. The pilot received minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, he conducted a routine preflight inspection, which included flight controls, oil level, and fuel sump checks. Following his inspection, he started the aircraft and taxied to the runway run-up area. The before takeoff checks were normal with no abnormalities observed before departure. After departure, the pilot climbed to 1,700 ft mean seal level and proceeded south toward Quabbin Reservoir. Upon reaching the reservoir, he turned north toward the airport. Shortly thereafter, while in straight and level flight, the engine lost all power. The pilot established best glide speed and attempted to restart the engine without success. Realizing he could not reach the airport, and considering the local roadway traffic, tree coverage, and powerlines, he decided, the safest option was to ditch the airplane in the reservoir. During the approach, the airplane struck trees before touching down on the surface of the water. The airplane subsequently began to sink, and the pilot egressed through the sliding canopy. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage and wings. The wreckage was recovered and retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA198
- Event ID
- 20260504202928
- Case number
- ERA26LA198
- 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. 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: 1f42a283d1820ae7d938a5c823e1a0d45f30df91b2b9c49675376770d502ecb0; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:22:51.013Z.