MIA99LA184 · Donald White VELOCITY XL/RG VELOCITY X
Donald White VELOCITY XL/RG VELOCITY X · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to Fort Pierce, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA184
- 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
Donald White VELOCITY XL/RG VELOCITY X
- Aircraft type
- Donald White VELOCITY XL RG
- 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
- N19DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo Fort Pierce, FL
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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; Wire, transmission
- 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 › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While maneuvering in cruise flight, the pilot/builder of the experimental airplane noticed a fluctuating fuel pressure gage and then the engine quit. The pilot executed a forced landing onto an interstate highway. Postcrash examination revealed an empty right wing fuel tank and no other abnormality of the fuel system and engine. Postcrash start and operation of the engine was satisfactory. The pilot/builder revealed that ever since he changed fuel filler caps, two flights before the accident flight, he had experienced fuel tank imbalance problems. A factory test pilot, using wing tank caps of various tightness adjustments, revealed that gravity feed from wing tank to sump tank could be interrupted if the cap were allowed to fit loosely and allow siphoning due to upper wing surface low pressure while inflight. As a result of the testing, the factory has increased the size of the fuel vent plumbing, eliminated the sump tank vent in favor of an air bleed, 'burp valve', and sent out alerts to all kit owners about fuel starvation resulting from loose-fitting caps.
Probable cause
The owner/pilot mechanic's failure to adjust the newly installed wing fuel caps resulting in the loss of engine power while in cruise flight due to fuel starvation and the subsequent collision with transmission wires while attempting a forced landing to a highway. Factors in the accident were the failure of the vent system to adequately compensate for the pressure differential created and the failure of the pilot to monitor fuel balance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA184
- Event ID
- 20001212X19071
- Case number
- MIA99LA184
- 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: 2401c832fde7dda4c7990ea4cd488d2191a9d53b0e3cfe47cecbf4c6a60c02bb; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:50:11.787Z.