LAX99LA318 · Ciernia GLASAIR III GLASAIR II
Ciernia GLASAIR III GLASAIR II · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV) to SLO · San Luis Obispo, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA318
- 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
Ciernia GLASAIR III GLASAIR II
- Aircraft type
- Ciernia GLASAIR
- 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
- N153JC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NVTo SLO · San Luis Obispo, CA
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 25 minutes into the flight over mountainous terrain, the pilot noticed that the left fuel cap was missing, and that fuel was escaping from the left tank filler opening. The pilot said he selected the right tank, but then returned the selector to the both position. He descended to make a precautionary landing at an airport ahead of the airplane and the engine quit during the en route descent. He landed in a field with the landing gear retracted and impacted a fence. An FAA inspector examined the airplane during recovery operations. As it was being lifted, he observed about 1 quart of fuel drain from the left wing tank. When the selector was positioned to both about 1 gallon drained from the belly in a continuous stream. According to the pilot and a mechanic who worked on the airplane before the flight, while at the departure airport the pilot had several electrical system problems that required several days to repair. During this time as electrical components were being replaced, engine starts became problematic. The mechanic pressurized the fuel tank with air through the left tank fuel filler opening and the engine started without difficulty. The mechanic suspected that the electric fuel pump was the cause of the problem and advised the pilot to have the pump examined. The pilot decided to continue with his flight plans instead. The pilot stated that he did not do his own preflight check of the airplane; he assumed that the fuel cap had been replaced. The mechanic reported that the pilot replaced the cowling and restarted the engine. Three witnesses watched the airplane taxi out and depart. No fuel caps were found on the ramp or the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which failed to ensure that the left fuel filler cap was secure, and his decision to continue flight with a known malfunction in the electric fuel pump. Also causal was the pilot's improper positioning of the fuel selector to the both selection after the siphoning fuel condition was noted from the left tank filler opening, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA318
- Event ID
- 20001212X19814
- Case number
- LAX99LA318
- 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 1999-09-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ee0eccd4272cc5b8626a7dd5cf778e65fbc44765c8508088b4438d74dcfae4fb; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:01:44.691Z.