LAX96LA153 · Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3
Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Mucugê Airport (CHD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA153
- 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
Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3
- Aircraft type
- Naval Aircraft Factory N3
- 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
- N45043
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mucugê Airport (CHD)To 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
- 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
- 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
- Fuel system, pump › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was in cruise when the fuel pressure went to zero. He attempted to restore the fuel pressure by using a hand wobble pump but was unsuccessful. The engine lost power and the aircraft nosed over during the forced landing in desert terrain. FAA inspectors examined the aircraft and found fuel in the tanks. The engine driven and hand wobble fuel pumps were removed from the engine and taken to an overhaul facility where they were installed in a calibrated test bench for a functional check. Both pumps failed the functional test and did not flow any fuel. Review of the maintenance records revealed no entry denoting an overhaul of the components at the time of the last engine overhaul. The history, calendar age, and total time of the pumps are unknown.
Probable cause
The failure of both the engine driven and hand wobble fuel pumps, which resulted in fuel starvation to the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA153
- Event ID
- 20001208X05601
- Case number
- LAX96LA153
- 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: 01e6b999abdad431d8327428ec1de8632113b0e0aaa1d211e2052c6302640068; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:40:45.074Z.