FTW96LA019 · Grumman American AA-5B
Grumman American AA-5B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) to Airpark East Airport (1F7)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA019
- 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
Grumman American AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N888R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), Houston, TXTo Airpark East Airport (1F7), Dallas, TX
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while level at 2,500 feet MSL the engine began to run rough, and 30 seconds later it lost total power. Attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful. The pilot contacted Houston Center and was given radar vectors to the Skydive Houston Airport. The pilot overshot the airport and maneuvered to land perpendicular to the runway. Approximately 20 yards from initial touch down, the aircraft's right wing struck a tree. The aircraft came to rest upright 20 to 30 yards past the runway between two hangars. Examination of the airplane revealed evidence of usable fuel. A teardown of the engine was accomplished and no mechanical anomalies were found that would have resulted in a loss of power. The airplane had not been flown for three years. The pilot recently purchased the airplane, and had applied for and received a ferry permit for the flight.
Probable cause
a loss of power for undetermined reasons, and the pilot misjudging distance and airspeed resulting in his failure to attain the proper touchdown point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA019
- Event ID
- 20001207X04700
- Case number
- FTW96LA019
- 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: 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: 1a27b299b5b711aebbdf2f06118243129d6c98a751c4d3f9a81eb67f0c56705a; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:08:25.571Z.