IAD00LA070 · Jordan KITFOX MODEL 1 KITFOX MOD
Jordan KITFOX MODEL 1 KITFOX MOD · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during takeoff
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00LA070
- 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
Jordan KITFOX MODEL 1 KITFOX MOD
- Aircraft type
- Jordan KITFOX MODEL 1
- 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
- N37SK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after take-off, a partial loss of engine power occurred, and the pilot was unable to maintain altitude. The airplane collided with trees and a fence before coming rest on the ground. Examination of the two-cycle Rotax engine and the forward Bing carburetor revealed that the jet needle had broken and was blocking the mixing tube. Two Rotax service information documents addressed the wearing of the jet needle, due to the needle clip rotating from vibrations. One document called for an immediate check of the jet needle and needle clip for wear, followed by a 50-hour check thereafter. The second notification stated that the jet needle should be replaced every 150 hours. A Bing service alert stated that if an o-ring had not been installed, the needle clip should be inspected every 10 hours for signs of wear. The pilot was not aware that an o-ring would prevent wear on the jet needle until after the accident. The pilot reported the engine had a total of 417 hours, and the jet needles and clips were replaced at the 200-hour inspection. The pilot also stated that the components were checked for wear 36 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
A broken carburetor jet needle, which blocked fuel from entering the carburetor's mixing tube and resulted in a partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00LA070
- Event ID
- 20001212X21741
- Case number
- IAD00LA070
- 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, coordinates. 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: 23aad94de133b84dd200c7e622a8053d3f3fadd5cd7546ddb7530e5720d91abe; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:06:15.843Z.