SEA97LA165 · Young TURBO CRUISER TURBO CRUI
Young TURBO CRUISER TURBO CRUI · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From 1V5 · Boulder, CO to Milford Municipal-Ben and Judy Briscoe Field (MLF)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA165
- 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
Young TURBO CRUISER TURBO CRUI
- Aircraft type
- Young TURBO CRUISER
- 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
- N6626W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1V5 · Boulder, COTo Milford Municipal-Ben and Judy Briscoe Field (MLF), UT
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while cruising about 13,500 feet mean seal level over the Rocky Mountains, the engine abruptly stopped. The pilot switched fuel tanks and achieved a restart and then continued to his destination. Approaching the destination, the aircraft developed a moderate vibration which subsided with the reduction and re-application of throttle. The pilot executed a normal approach but was high and initiated a go-around. During the left crosswind turn, the engine abruptly quit for a second time, and the pilot executed a forced landing. During the landing roll, the aircraft's main landing gear folded and collapsed. Post-accident examination of the aircraft revealed 3.5 gallons of fuel remaining in the left wing and 1.5 gallons of fuel remaining in the right wing. The pilot stated that he had departed with full fuel tanks on this flight, which was his first long-distance flight in the experimental airplane. The aircraft's records indicated that its fuel capacity was 60 gallons, of which 56 gallons were considered usable fuel; however the actual fuel capacity and unusable fuel were not verified after the accident. The pilot stated that the aircraft did not have a flight manual, so he based his estimates of 10 gallons per hour fuel burn rate and 130 knots cruise speed at high altitude as a conservative interpretation of the information that had been given to him by the airplane's previous owner (8 to 9 gallons per hour, and 140 knots cruise speed). The pilot flight-planned for an estimated flight time of three hours, and estimated that he would have consumed about half of the fuel carried in the airplane. While en route, he determined that his true airspeed and ground speed were about 103 knots; less than what he had been told by the airplane's previous owner. Actual total flight time for the flight was four hours. No evidence of preexisting mechanical anomalies was found during the post-accident inspection of the damaged airplane.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Factors include the pilot's fuel consumption calculations based upon insufficient or erroneous information provided by the amateur-built airplane's builder and previous owner, and terrain conditions not suitable for a successful forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA165
- Event ID
- 20001208X08507
- Case number
- SEA97LA165
- 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: a386418813be7c700d96c7aa7aa2cd92009c88fe977a71bb4cd30afd9adbdd4f; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:13:03.931Z.