LAX97LA026 · Grumman AA1C
Grumman AA1C · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA026
- 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 AA1C
- Aircraft type
- Grumman AA1
- 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
- N9519U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM)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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he flew most of the 1.2-hour flight with the right fuel tank selected. While on approach for landing, he selected the left tank, which was 3/4 full. Approximately 5 minutes later, after completing the landing checklist, and while on 1.5 mile final approach at approximately 700 feet agl, he noted that there was no power available from the engine when he advanced the throttle. While maneuvering to an off-airport landing, first the right wing, and then the nose, contacted the ground, and the aircraft came to rest, inverted, in a field. Emergency personnel reported there was no evident fuel smell at the site; however, the operator of the aircraft reported that the aircraft had been fueled to capacity the previous day, and according to the hour meter in the aircraft, had flown only 2.0 hours, since being fueled.
Probable cause
loss of engine power on final approach for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA026
- Event ID
- 20001208X06934
- Case number
- LAX97LA026
- 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: 84984160f0fd15c36a8f7d138275afe34a32655db9fec7475b3818d0e216e5c4; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:33:09.269Z.