LAX99LA084 · Maule M-4-220C
Maule M-4-220C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 0L7 to Sky Ranch Airport (3L2)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA084
- 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
Maule M-4-220C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-4
- 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
- N474W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0L7To Sky Ranch Airport (3L2), Sandy Valley, NV
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he had flown to the airport to purchase fuel but was not successful. Therefore, he planned to fly back to his home base airport. The pilot reported that three of his airplane's four fuel tanks were either empty or contained at most 5 gallons of fuel. The pilot selected the left main fuel tank for use during takeoff, and the airplane climbed between 400 and 500 feet before experiencing a total loss of engine power. Thereafter, the pilot made a forced landing beyond the departure end of the runway and collided with the airport's perimeter fence. While still on scene immediately following the accident, the pilot reported that he had evidently exhausted his airplane's fuel supply. Then, the pilot partially disassembled his airplane and moved it from Nevada to North Carolina. About 2 months later, the pilot indicated to the Safety Board investigator that he desired to clarify the initial information which he had provided. According to the pilot, during the accident flight his airplane had contained between 24 and 26 gallons of fuel, but only an estimated 5 gallons of this quantity was in the left main fuel tank, which was selected during takeoff. Additionally, the engine driven fuel pump was examined in North Carolina and was found contaminated with metal shavings and other debris. The rubber diaphragm had small holes and cuts in that could have reduced the pump's ability to deliver full designed pressure. No record was found in the maintenance records that the pump was ever replaced and it is believed that it is an original production installation on the engine.
Probable cause
Fuel starvation due to the pilot's failure to ensure that a tank containing an adequate fuel supply was selected for takeoff. A factor in the accident was the contamination in the engine driven fuel pump, which likely was not capable of providing full system pressure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA084
- Event ID
- 20001204X00085
- Case number
- LAX99LA084
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-01-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bdcf5906b2586299bfb40a1f1342a70c103d237156e6c1769cc20208c096668c; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:56:23.081Z.