MIA96LA207 · Stout GLASAIR III GLASAIR II
Stout GLASAIR III GLASAIR II · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA207
- 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
Stout GLASAIR III GLASAIR II
- Aircraft type
- Stout GLASAIR
- 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
- N340
- Operator
- Robert T. Owens · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FLTo 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 · climb to 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated he drained the fuel sumps and visually checked the main fuel tanks during his preflight inspection. He could only see dampness inside the fuel tank with a little visible fuel located next to the wing root. The pilot completed an engine run up, taxied to the active runway, and departed. During the initial climb at about 4,500 feet, the engine sputtered and quit. The pilot turned on the boost pump and moved the fuel selector from the main tank, to the header tank, and back to the main tank, but the engine did not restart. He notified approach control of the emergency and made a 180-degree turn back toward the airport. Realizing the airplane would not reach the airport, the pilot attempted a forced landing in an open field. However, he was unable to reach the selected field, and the main landing gear collided with bushes. The nose of the airplane then pitched down, and the airplane collided with the terrain in a nose down attitude. Examination of the fuel tanks revealed no fuel was present. Also, no precrash mechanical failure or malfunction of the engine assembly or accessories was found.
Probable cause
inadequate preflight by the pilot, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and loss of engine power, due to an inadequate supply of fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA207
- Event ID
- 20001208X06577
- Case number
- MIA96LA207
- 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: ea521bc42b41f1353b5412140f39a0a14753787b1b746bcc5931cc1fdb77b5e3; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:37:29.465Z.