LAX98LA212 · North American NAVION
North American NAVION · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 0O3 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA212
- 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
North American NAVION
- Aircraft type
- North American 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
- N1400Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0O3To 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
- 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 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
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Reversed
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness to the accident reported that the airport is located on a plateau and that the surrounding area is not suitable for an off-field landing. The witness reported that he observed the airplane takeoff and as it passed by it looked and sounded normal. He returned to his hangar and heard the engine go to idle. The witness went outside and observed the aircraft losing altitude as it made a 180-degree turn to attempt a return to the runway. The witness reported that the engine caught and sounded as if it was at full power, the airplane regained some altitude, and then the engine stopped. The airplane descended into the ground short of the runway. The pilot stated that he had completed work on the fuel selector handle and had inadvertently reversed the handle when he reinstalled it into the airplane. When he selected the main tank with the fuel selector handle, the fuel valve for the main tank would have been closed and the fuel valve for the aft tank would have been open. The pilot stated that he had refueled the main tank, but the aft tank did not have enough fuel in it to keep the engine running.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper reinstallation of the fuel selector valve handle, which led to the selection of the wrong fuel tank and fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA212
- Event ID
- 20001211X10365
- Case number
- LAX98LA212
- 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: 8efc21bb02e4828931e2ecc13018b9cc0e49b230fabacd2db22aade29b3fec47; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:37:13.550Z.