LAX96LA085 · Klingberg Miniplane DSA-1
Klingberg Miniplane DSA-1 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA085
- 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
- 1 · 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
Klingberg Miniplane DSA-1
- Aircraft type
- Klingberg Miniplane DSA-1
- 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
- N66TD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo not recorded
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Ignition system › Malfunction
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, adjustment, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness saw the pilot and mechanic working on the magnetos, then reinstall them in the aircraft on January 6. After reinstallation, the engine was started and it ran extremely rough, with backfiring and missing evident. The witness said the pilot and the mechanic were never able to get the engine to smooth out. On the morning of the accident, the witness saw the pilot bring the airplane out of his hangar and start it. As on the day before, the engine backfired and ran very roughly. The pilot then taxied away and departed for a neighboring airport. The pilot contacted the ATCT for a landing clearance, then canceled the request a short time later. The pilot indicated he was going to return to his home airport. Firefighters at a fire station near the accident site heard and saw the airplane as it flew over their location. They said the engine was running rough, missing, and backfiring. The aircraft circled an athletic field at a nearby school twice, then began a landing approach. The witnesses said the airplane stalled in a turn and crashed nose first into the field. A fire erupted immediately, which consumed the aircraft. The airframe and engine were examined by FAA inspectors. The engine accessories, including both magnetos and portions of their respective ignition harnesses, were either heavily damaged or destroyed by fire. Compression was noted in all cylinders with accessory gear and valve train continuity established. A Stromberg model NA-S2A1 carburetor was installed on the engine. The carburetor is not approved for installation on the Continental O-200 engine.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional operation of the aircraft with known mechanical deficiencies in the engine, and his failure to maintain an adequate airspeed while maneuvering for a forced landing, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA085
- Event ID
- 20001208X05160
- Case number
- LAX96LA085
- 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: 505750b290ed47ada98ec307dacba8723d4d14c6985cf8e45abb1fb068c6f183; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:28:13.518Z.