CHI00LA167 · Rans Employee Flying Club RANS S-12 XL RANS S-12
Rans Employee Flying Club RANS S-12 XL RANS S-12 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Sauk-Prairie Airport (91C) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA167
- 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
Rans Employee Flying Club RANS S-12 XL RANS S-12
- Aircraft type
- Rans Employee Flying Club RANS S-12 XL
- 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
- N43886
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sauk-Prairie Airport (91C)To 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; Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Fuel system, nozzle › Obstructed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that during climb after takeoff, the engine '...coughed and sputtered for approximately 5-7 sec[onds] then quit. I put the nose down and turned [right] into the wind [heading] 270, which would have landed us on the airfield. At 100 [feet] we were at 50 mph (stall 43 mph) and I attempted a restart when we were pushed to the right by a gust of wind. I put in left rudder and aileron and we stalled out. We impacted the ground wings level and nose slightly low.' No anomalies were found with respect to the airframe or control system that could be associated with a preexisting condition. During an engine teardown inspection, the carburetor float chambers were examined and were found to have contamination consistent with corrosion. This contamination was found in the bottom of the float bowl and on the main jet retainer plate. The main jet was removed and contamination particles were found in this area as well.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of an obstructed fuel nozzle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA167
- Event ID
- 20001212X21184
- Case number
- CHI00LA167
- 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: 4180d52abd08d986f9359be0547f7c53bb24d78eaa839c19fffdde0785ddb655; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:37:08.091Z.