LAX94LA001 · Cessna O-2A
Nat. Museum of Naval Aviation Cessna O-2A · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Royan-Médis Airport (RYN) to NOT REPORTED
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA001
- 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
Cessna O-2A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna O-2
- 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
- N5151A
- Operator
- Nat. Museum of Naval Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Royan-Médis Airport (RYN)To NOT REPORTED
- 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)
- 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
- Fuel system, injector › Blocked(partial)
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The front and then rear engines lost partial power during initial climb from the Ryan Field near Tucson, Arizona. Unable to continue climbing, the pilot made a forced landing in rough terrain about two miles east of the airport. An examination of the airplane's fuel system revealed two of the front engine's six fuel injectors were partially clogged with a foreign substance. No clogging of the rear injectors was found. Prior to the accident (ferry) flight, the airplane had been idle for several years. In preparation for the flight, recent maintenance which included limited purging of the fuel system had reportedly been accomplished by contractor maintenance personnel.
Probable cause
was the partial loss of engine power during initial climb due to partial clogging of the engine's fuel injectors. Blockage of the fuel injectors was due to inadequate maintenance of the fuel system by contract maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA001
- Event ID
- 20001211X13584
- Case number
- LAX94LA001
- 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: 76b26372e73b3b6894ffb961619121d8ceeef903af753ed256166bce8469d426; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:34:28.629Z.