SEA00LA084 · Oveross VANS RV-8
Oveross VANS RV-8 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From 7S5 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA084
- 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
Oveross VANS RV-8
- Aircraft type
- Oveross VANS RV-8
- 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
- N998TT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7S5To 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
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Fuel system, line fitting › Twisted
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, not obtained/maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 100 feet above ground level the engine of the pilot/builder assembled RV-8 kit-plane began to run rough. The pilot made a left 90 degree turn to return to land during which all power was lost. He then turned back right and landed hard, collapsing the landing gear. Fueling records revealed approximately 10 gallons of fuel in the right tank per the pilot's estimate. Post-crash examination revealed that the fuel pick-up tube within the right tank had become mis-positioned (twisted) approximately 180 degrees, placing the tube pick-up end at the mid-level of the 21 gallon tank, and resulting in fuel starvation. The pilot had done maintenance on the right tank several weeks earlier including tightening a hex nut which retained the 90-degree elbow fitting holding the pick-up tube in place. Tightening of the hex nut without an anti-rotation bracket could rotate the pick-up tube into a mis-position. The aircraft design and construction predated the dissemination of design plans containing the anti-rotation bracket, and the manufacturer had not issued any notice of the bracket specifications to the pilot/builder. The pilot/builder, unaware of the specifications, had not installed the bracket in the right fuel tank.
Probable cause
The rotation of the right fuel tank elbow fitting within the tank during previous maintenance. The improper alignment resulted in the fuel pick-up tube being mis-positioned and a subsequent starvation of fuel to the engine. Contributing factors were the non-installation of an anti-rotation bracket to secure the elbow fitting, the kit manufacturer's failure to issue a notice of the bracket design to previous aircraft owners, and the pilot's not establishing/maintaining a proper rate of descent resulting in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA084
- Event ID
- 20001212X21119
- Case number
- SEA00LA084
- 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: e3d58df6c40c6dcc55c141190913205eec2a0b10ad6cc25939af9396a74c8789; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:55:09.824Z.