MIA98LA130 · Starck AURIGA
Starck AURIGA · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From 3M3 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA130
- 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
- 1 · 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
Starck AURIGA
- Aircraft type
- Starck AURIGA
- 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
- N311RS
- Operator
- Camp Excelisor
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3M3To 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fuel system, electric boost pump › Leak
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was observed to climb steeply after takeoff and enter a downwind leg for landing. Witnesses heard the aircraft's engine lose power and the pilot transmitted on the Unicom frequency that he had an engine out. The pilot rolled the aircraft to a steep bank angle to enter a base leg and then a final leg. The aircraft overshot the final approach course and the pilot continued to use a steep bank in an attempt to get onto final. As the aircraft approached the final course it rolled rapidly to an inverted position and crashed on a street. The engine was heard to accelerate just prior to impact. Post-crash examination of the engine, propeller, and engine fuel system showed no evidence of pre-crash mechanical failure or malfunction. The electric fuel boost pump switch was found in the on position after the accident. The pump did not operate after the accident. An examination of the pump revealed that the negative power wire had been pulled from the pump motor and was missing. A replacement wire was installed and the motor operated normally. The pump portion of the unit was tested and found to leak from the pump drain. An incorrect O-ring was found installed in the pump. The correct O-ring was installed and the pump operated normally. The manufacturer of the pump reported that the incorrect O-ring would result in the engine-driven fuel pump drawing air into the engine fuel system. Witnesses stated to an FAA inspector that the aircraft had an engine failure several weeks before the accident due to an electric fuel boost pump failure and that the pilot had made repairs to the pump prior to the accident flight.
Probable cause
A leak in the electric fuel boost pump caused by an improperly sized 'O' ring installation and the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during an approach to a forced landing resulting in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA130
- Event ID
- 20001211X09916
- Case number
- MIA98LA130
- 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: 7addb4aeb2f58b0b781b9e944bc135e65fb1560099f14068d68740921b75aace; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:37:49.089Z.