LAX00LA052 · Rhea KR-2
Rhea KR-2 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Chino Airport (CNO) to Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA052
- 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
Rhea KR-2
- Aircraft type
- Rhea KR-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
- N77KR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, 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; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fuel system, tank › Leak
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Moreno Valley, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion after 4 hours of flight. During the forced landing, the aircraft impacted a tree, a building, and a parked car. During recovery, the wings were removed from the airplane and tipped to drain the remaining fuel. Approximately 1/2 quart of fuel was drained from the left wing tank, and about 10 tablespoons were drained from the right wing tank. The purolator/filter contained only droplets of fuel. The pilot reported that following recovery of the wreckage, he discovered a leak in the composite fuel tank. Fuel was soaking into the foam backing. He estimated that 8 to 10 gallons of fuel were lost during the 4-hour flight. The pilot said the accident could have been prevented by paying more attention to the fuel tank construction during manufacture of the wing.
Probable cause
An undetected fuel leak from an improperly manufactured right tank into the internal wing spaces, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA052
- Event ID
- 20001212X20263
- Case number
- LAX00LA052
- 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: 7f75b0e294b36163b1841d6f8e5bad743b544e1ec7747c18d5877a7c348d390b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:19:48.268Z.