ANC99LA101 · Haering Avid Flyer
Haering Avid Flyer · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA101
- 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
Haering Avid Flyer
- Aircraft type
- Haering Avid Flyer AVID FLYER
- 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
- N511AF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Airport (Z41), AKTo 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
- 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)
- 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 › Blocked(total)
- Fluid, fuel › Improper
- Fuel system, tank › Delamination
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo commercial pilot reported that during cruise flight the engine began to run rough, and lose power. He noted that for a short time, he was able to restore partial engine power by actuating the engine fuel primer. While attempting to land on a small, private airstrip, all engine power was lost, and the airplane collided with a stand of trees. An examination of the interior of the fiberglass fuel tanks revealed delamination of the resin material within the tank, and both main fuel tank outlets were blocked with a brown, plastic-like material. Examination of both in-line wing fuel filters revealed the presence of the same material found in the main fuel tanks. The pilot/owner stated that in the past, he had operated the airplane for about 40 hours using an alcohol based fuel. AVID Aircraft service letter number 03, dated 5/91, covering all AVID Flyer models, stipulates that a placard be placed near the filler neck stating, in part: 'NO ALCOHOL BLENDED FUELS. These fuels may cause deterioration of the fiberglass tanks or carburetor parts.' The pilot/owner stated that since he has owned the airplane, he has not received any warnings or directives concerning the use of alcohol based fuels directly from the manufacture of the airplane kit, AVID Aircraft, Inc.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to blockage of the airplane fuel system, a delamination of the fiberglass fuel tanks, and the usage of an improper fuel. A factor associated with the accident was the failure of the kit manufacturer to inform the pilot/owner against the usage of alcohol based fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA101
- Event ID
- 20001212X19144
- Case number
- ANC99LA101
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-08-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d99b44755e4426a9d2d9c5304e030bd1eb1d00930789f1266e8f2ba5f1780048; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:21:19.725Z.