MIA97LA166 · Travis C. Elmore B2B/582
Travis C. Elmore B2B/582 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA166
- 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
Travis C. Elmore B2B/582
- Aircraft type
- Travis C Elmore B2
- 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
- N43CT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Partial 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Powerplant controls, inadvertent activation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The day before the accident flight the pilot added oil to the rotary valve reservoir and while doing so, inadvertently dropped the reservoir cap gasket. He searched for but was unable to locate the gasket and replaced it. The day of the accident he performed a preflight to the airplane using a homemade checklist which did not mention to check the choke for proper position. He checked the engine using the engine manufacturers checklist which only mentioned that the choke be checked for freedom of movement not proper position. He performed an engine run-up before departure with no discrepancies noted. After takeoff during the initial climb, the engine experienced a partial loss of power. During an emergency descent the airplane collided with trees. Post accident examination of the engine by the pilot revealed that the manual choke of the rear carburetor was activated.
Probable cause
The pilots inadvertent activation of the rear carburetor choke lever during routine engine maintenance the day before the accident. Contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain encountered during the forced landing and also failure of the engine manufacturer to include the preflight examination of the choke levers for proper position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA166
- Event ID
- 20001208X07981
- Case number
- MIA97LA166
- 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: 4c01b54a133b9088ea6b5819472586d8798775a3e3734c56e58af9b000c9b165; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:06:29.266Z.