LAX97LA092 · Crane THORP T-18
Crane THORP T-18 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA092
- 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
- 2 · 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
Crane THORP T-18
- Aircraft type
- Crane THORP T-18
- 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
- N40918
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Fuel system, line fitting › Other
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Powerplant › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to pilots who were familiar with the experimental aircraft, the engine had a history of power loss events dating back several months prior to the accident flight. On the day of the accident, the CFI and the dual student/aircraft owner had completed two touch-and-go landings and were on crosswind leg when the engine abruptly quit. A crash and postcrash fire resulted from the ensuing forced landing. A postcrash investigation revealed that a check valve was present in the engine fuel system to provide fuel under pressure to the carburetor when the electric boost pump was operating. The check valve was disassembled and was found to have no internal components. This permitted the fuel to circulate back to the fuel pump inlet and interfered with fuel flow to the carburetor.
Probable cause
Installation by the pilot/owner of an unairworthy check valve in the fuel system of the amateur built aircraft, which resulted in inadequate fuel flow to the engine and subsequent engine failure. A factor in the accident was the owner's operation of the aircraft with known deficiencies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA092
- Event ID
- 20001208X07319
- Case number
- LAX97LA092
- 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: b1ac3b795d45646d892545c724fccc7ad3c1f3ec90d513c0d92070c2dadd73c2; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:03:13.126Z.