LAX97LA115 · Ryan NAVION
Ryan NAVION · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Marina Municipal Airport (OAR) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA115
- 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
- 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
- N4969K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marina Municipal Airport (OAR)To Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off and the airplane gained about 800 feet when suddenly all engine power was lost. The pilot attempted to return to the runway, but collided with the airport's boundary fence short of the field. According to the pilot, six new cylinders had been recently installed in the engine, and the purpose of the flight was to complete the break-in process. The pilot reported that he believed 8 to 10 gallons of fuel should have been in the main fuel tank at takeoff, but evidently the fuel burn-off rate was greater than he had previously calculated. The FAA coordinator reported that he examined the airplane and drained all the fuel which remained in the tanks. A maximum of 0.5 gallon of fuel was found in each wing tip fuel tank. Also, about 3.0 gallons of fuel were found in the rear seat auxiliary tank, and 1.5 gallons were found in the main tank. The estimated unusable fuel quantity in the main tank is 3.0 gallons. The pilot indicated when engine power was lost the fuel tank selector was positioned to the main fuel tank.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's improper preflight inspection and his inaccurate fuel consumption calculations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA115
- Event ID
- 20001208X07569
- Case number
- LAX97LA115
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-03-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5fd0d4b405922091ca4a26ab0eb00ea1a162549e637c71a9b5385592c564e991; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:14:52.057Z.