MIA97LA113 · Chance Vought F4U
Chance Vought F4U · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 34J to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA113
- 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
Chance Vought F4U
- Aircraft type
- Chance Vought F4
- 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
- N45NL
- Operator
- Robert F. Collings · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 34JTo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Fuel supply, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during his preflight inspection of the airplane the fuel gages indicated 120 gallons. He visually checked the fuel tank; however, he did not stick the fuel tank. He departed on the flight and joined up with another airplane at 3,500 feet. A person in a T6 airplane was taking photos of his airplane. His engine started to sputter. He checked his fuel selector on, boost pump on high, mixture full rich, and that the magnetos were on both. He informed the other pilot that he was returning to the airport. The engine continued to sputter and quit about 20 seconds later. He made a forced landing to the water. Examination of the airplane after recovery revealed the fuel tank was not ruptured. There was an odor of fuel in the fuel tank. No fuel was present in the fuel tank, and about one cup of water was present near the rear of the fuel tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to assure that an adequate supply of fuel was on board for the intended flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA113
- Event ID
- 20001208X07770
- Case number
- MIA97LA113
- 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: b894bb939010392b814fa57311581cd45afb1af811b43c04d2fc70cc473261c9; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:02:05.400Z.