ATL00LA033 · Aero Comp Inc COMP-AIR-6
Aero Comp Inc COMP-AIR-6 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Homestead Air Reserve Base (HST) to Merritt Island Airport (COI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL00LA033
- 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
Aero Comp Inc COMP-AIR-6
- Aircraft type
- Aero Comp COMP-AIR-6
- 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
- N61520
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Homestead Air Reserve Base (HST), Homestead, FLTo Merritt Island Airport (COI), Merritt Island, FL
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- 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 grade › Starvation
- Fuel system, filter › Contamination
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The day before the flight the pilot had topped-off the fuel tanks with aviation fuel and he had flown the airplane about 25 minutes after the refueling. After the 25-minute flight, the pilot parked the airplane, and it was not flown again until the next day. Before the flight, the pilot received a weather briefing, filed a flight plan, and completed a preflight inspection. The fuel sample taken during the preflight inspection was free of visible contaminates. About one hour and 44 minutes into the flight, the pilot experienced a loss of engine power. The pilot selected a nearby orange grove for a forced landing and established an approach to a road in the orange grove. As the pilot maneuvered the airplane for the touchdown, the tail section of the airplane collided with a tree, the airplane turned several degrees, collided with the ground, and slid into an embankment. During the examination of the airplane, rust and other debris were recovered from the fuel system filter assembly. The composition of the debris was not determined, however the debris reduced the normal flow of fuel through the fuel system. The airplane had undergone routine maintenance and preflight inspections.
Probable cause
The maintenance personnel inadequate inspection of the fuel system that resulted in loss of engine power due to fuel filter contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL00LA033
- Event ID
- 20001212X20584
- Case number
- ATL00LA033
- 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: c3e129e086ea4f0ceb5d7a51c945b9fa366e0a8a80f80714b442f7cb425c09b4; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:41:54.151Z.