MIA00LA114 · Mckinnis STEEN SKYBOLT STEEN SKYB
Mckinnis STEEN SKYBOLT STEEN SKYB · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL) to St Clair County Airport (PLR)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA114
- 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
Mckinnis STEEN SKYBOLT STEEN SKYB
- Aircraft type
- Mckinnis STEEN SKYBOLT
- 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
- N75CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL)To St Clair County Airport (PLR), Pell City, AL
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Fuel system, gascolator › Leak
- Fuel system, gascolator › Loose
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he had landed at Tuscaloosa to refuel, and after departing the engine ceased operating without any warning. He executed an emergency landing, and the airplane incurred substantial damage during the landing. The pilot, also a certificated aircraft mechanic, further stated that he and the FAA inspector looked at the wreckage after the accident, and they discovered a massive fuel leak at the gascolator. The gascolator thumb nut had not been safety wired, and it had backed off, allowing fuel to pour out the top of the gascolator. The airplane had accumulated 10 hours since its last condition inspection, which the pilot said had been performed by the owner/operator.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power during climb due to fuel starvation which was caused by a fuel leak in the gascolator as a result of improper maintenance by the operator that resulted in the pilot making a forced landing during which the airplane sustained substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA114
- Event ID
- 20001212X20699
- Case number
- MIA00LA114
- 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: 4dbf462ad6e26a608d2d296c6c6154b3794b4a55863154c8c4e8d39615b70a64; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:02:25.933Z.