MIA00LA044 · American AA-5
American AA-5 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 2R5 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA044
- 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
American AA-5
- Aircraft type
- American AA-5
- 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
- N5864L
- Operator
- James R. Sullens · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2R5To 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
- 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)
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During preflight, slight amount of water noted in right wing and sump tanks. No water noted in left wing or sump tanks. Engine start/run-up, uneventful. After takeoff about 300 feet agl near the departure end of the runway, the engine began to 'sputter.' Attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful. While maneuvering for a forced landing, the airplane pitched nose down and impacted a cotton field. Water was found in the carburetor bowl. An incorrect fuel drain valve by part number and design was installed in the right wing fuel tank; no determination made when the valve was installed. Testing on a same make and model airplane using an exemplar of the fuel drain valve found installed in the right fuel tank revealed .99 pound of fuel remained in the tank and could not be drained. All fuel could be drained with the airplane manufacturer specified drain valve installed. The airplane sat for a couple of months before the accident date with the right tank not topped; the left tank was full. The airplane was out of annual inspection. Additionally, the pilot's medical certificate was expired, and he could not produce the date of his last biennial flight review.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain airspeed resulting in the in-flight loss of control while maneuvering for a forced landing in a field after the loss of engine power. Contributing factors were the loss of engine power due to water-contaminated fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA044
- Event ID
- 20001212X20288
- Case number
- MIA00LA044
- 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: 2ec7075cbfc6315b581fa1ae85be0022093d54c8b0b78c7a834e7d185069f531; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:45:46.133Z.