LAX97LA035 · Aerostar, S.A YAK 52
Biggles Aviation Aerostar, S.A YAK 52 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA035
- 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
Aerostar, S.A YAK 52
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar YAK-52
- 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
- N207YK
- Operator
- Biggles Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), 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
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Malfunction
- Fuel system, carburetor › Undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Fullerton, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was a new production airplane, which was manufactured in Romania, then was disassembled and shipped in a crate to the United States. This was the first flight following reassembly of the aircraft. The aircraft had been run on the ground for 50 minutes, and a high speed taxi test had been completed. Shortly after takeoff, a loss of engine power occurred. The pilot landed on the runway, but insufficient runway was remaining to stop before colliding with a building and a fence at the departure end of the runway. The powerplant was a Russian manufactured 9-cylinder radial engine with a pressure carburetor. The pilot said he believed that the carburetor malfunctioned. The aircraft was examined by an FAA airworthiness inspector with the assistance of a Russian factory trained technician. The carburetor was removed from the engine and a used/serviceable one was installed in its place. The engine was then started and exercised through the normal power range with no problem noted. The technician stated that disassembly of the carburetor required special tools available only at the factory. The inspector reported that the directions for disassembling the aircraft were used as a checklist/reference for reassembling the aircraft, and that the directions were written only in Russian. The Russian technician said that '. . . the factory did not do one or two steps on the checklist.'
Probable cause
loss of engine power due to an undetermined internal carburetor malfunction. A factor relating to the accident was: the directions that were use for reassembly of the aircraft were written only in Russian.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA035
- Event ID
- 20001208X07066
- Case number
- LAX97LA035
- 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: 01fe119280655bca53e94228a31a8b43a8e6d5b75410a6812d40908060ebdfd5; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:33:01.895Z.