MIA00LA053 · Swertfeger VELOCITY 173 ELITE VELOCITY 1
Swertfeger VELOCITY 173 ELITE VELOCITY 1 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Pryor Field Regional Airport (DCU) to Moises R. Espinosa Airport (MBT)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA053
- 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
- 1 · 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
Swertfeger VELOCITY 173 ELITE VELOCITY 1
- Aircraft type
- Swertfeger VELOCITY 173
- 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
- N627KB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pryor Field Regional Airport (DCU), Decatur, ALTo Moises R. Espinosa Airport (MBT)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Unknown › Maintenance, annual inspection, not complied with
- Unknown › Maintenance, service bulletin/letter, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on approach for landing when the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power, and crashed during a forced landing. Examination of the airframe and engine assembly revealed no evidence of a precrash mechanical failure or malfunction. Visual inspection of the spark plugs revealed very black and sooty. Fuel was present in the flow divider but was not present in the line between the fuel servo and flow divider. The servo fuel injector was removed and examined. The fuel diaphragm had not been replaced. The servo fuel injector was placed in a test bench and a functional test performed. Fuel was pouring out of the venturi causing erratic air flow through the regulator and erratic air flow. The air cover and diaphragm was removed to determine the source of the fuel leak. The fuel diaphragm stem was bent. The center body was removed with the fuel diaphragm attached to the center body bellows. The bottom calibration nut was removed from the fuel diaphragm stem. The fuel diaphragm was removed from the bellows and a leakage check was performed. The bellows was split and air was leaking through the bellows. Appropriate AD's and SB's had not been complied with resulting in an in-flight power loss due to an over rich condition.
Probable cause
The failure of an unknown maintenance person to comply with an Airworthiness Directive (replace center body bellows seal assembly and tube bushings) and Service Bulletin (replace fuel diaphragm) resulting in an in-flight power loss due to an over rich condition caused by the failure of the center body bellows seal assembly, and subsequent forced landing and in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA053
- Event ID
- 20001212X20292
- Case number
- MIA00LA053
- 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: e34b07f4de4c3afe426dc26cf93743f0d46ab8a08b23c45c0364922fe4cf8d84; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:34:35.118Z.