FTW97LA118 · Ryan NAVION A
Ryan NAVION A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Brighton Van-Aire Estates Airport (CO12) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA118
- 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
Ryan NAVION A
- Aircraft type
- Ryan NAVION
- 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
- N800PS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brighton Van-Aire Estates Airport (CO12), Brighton, COTo 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 (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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he last flew the airplane 5 days before the accident. On that day, the airplane had been fueled to capacity, then he flew for 1.5 hours. For the accident flight, the pilot estimated he had no less than 38 gallons of fuel on board (20 gallons in the fuselage tank and 18 gallons in the two wing tanks). The pilot said that although he did not visually check the fuel tanks prior to takeoff, the fuel gauges indicated all fuel tanks were full. Shortly after takeoff, the engine lost power. The pilot made a forced landing in a plowed field, and the airplane was substantially damaged. When the pilot removed the right wing fuel cap, he saw no evidence of fuel in the tank. The fuselage tank was full. Fuel from the fuselage tank can be introduced into the main fuel supply by opening the fuel transfer valve. Activating the boost pump will accelerate the process. The pilot said he turned on the boost pump but did not have sufficient time to open the fuel transfer valve.
Probable cause
A total power loss due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection of the airplane and its fuel system. Factors include: the pilot's failure to refuel the airplane, the improper fuel tank selector position that would not allow fuel transfer from the fuselage tank to the wing tanks, and the rough, uneven, and soft terrain on which the forced landing was made.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA118
- Event ID
- 20001208X07532
- Case number
- FTW97LA118
- 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: 35d0127c0bdfeba8531f6ca689d15cd91d0a3f58231b1384ee0b235c8ed74a4b; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:15:48.695Z.