LAX96LA329 · Stinson 108
Stinson 108 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 2O1 to Sonoma Valley Airport (0Q3)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA329
- 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
Stinson 108
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N97337
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2O1To Sonoma Valley Airport (0Q3), SCHELLVILLESON, CA
- 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 tank selector position, not verified
- Pilot in command › Mixture, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot leaned the engine before takeoff, but as the aircraft reached about 50 feet agl, the engine lost power. He switched tanks, enriched the mixture, pumped the throttle, and attempted to restart the engine. The engine started, but it ran for only a few seconds before quitting again. When his second attempted restart was unsuccessful, he executed a forced landing. During the forced landing, the airplane hit a log and was damaged. The pilot said he could have induced the problem by over leaning the engine. He also said he could have restricted the fuel flow when he inadvertently moved the fuel selector beyond the tank detent. The aircraft was fueled with a mixture of aviation fuel and auto gas, but it did not have an STC for auto gas. The aircraft had not had an annual inspection within the previous 12 months, and the pilot's medical certificate had expired.
Probable cause
the pilot's over leaning of the fuel mixture, which resulted in the initial loss of engine power; and continued fuel starvation, resulting from the pilot's inadvertent mispositioning of the fuel selector valve during an attempted restart of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA329
- Event ID
- 20001208X06770
- Case number
- LAX96LA329
- 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: a7ea7cbca7a20144ed82f0ab2abb217cd4e36cf414e01575a4c40db2edc8a9eb; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:35:40.387Z.