LAX00LA162 · Schweizer G-164B
Schweizer G-164B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA162
- 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
Schweizer G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N3629F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY), Tracy, CATo 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
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a positioning flight while the pilot was flying toward an auxiliary strip, the engine lost all power, surged to full power, and then quit completely. The pilot attempted a forced landing in a short field and on approach, the airplane collided with a berm and nosed over. During the subsequent examination, 45 gallons of fuel was found in the center fuel tank. No evidence was observed of any mechanical problems with the airframe or engine. The airplane's total time was about 13,085 hours since new. The current engine was installed in 1997, and its total time was about 8,180 hours (1,237 hours since last major overhaul). An FAA airworthiness inspector responded to the accident site and examined the airplane. No evidence was observed of any mechanical problems with the airframe. The engine and damaged engine-related accessories were examined, with no anomalies found. The carburetor was observed destroyed in the impact and was not functionally testable. No evidence of any internal mechanical malfunction was found within the engine or testable accessories and the engine was returned to service.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA162
- Event ID
- 20001212X20858
- Case number
- LAX00LA162
- 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: 0ea579c8a97ee5df9b56c4cb9ef1ee0a23a131152d3efdcebb03ded2263efbec; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:15:10.705Z.