CHI01LA112 · Meyers 200A
Meyers 200A · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Four Star Heliport (0MI7) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA112
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Meyers 200A
- Aircraft type
- Meyers 200
- 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
- N495C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Four Star Heliport (0MI7), Tecumseh, MITo 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; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage on impact with trees and terrain during a forced landing following an in-flight loss of engine power on initial climb. A post impact fire occurred. The pilot reported no injuries. The pilot stated, "I had just completed an annual inspection on it. ... On Monday morning I drained the sumps did a full power run up and proceeded to take off on runway 36 for a local check flight. Everything seemed normal until just after I rotated and cycled the landing gear. A few seconds later I lost power. I switched on the boost pump not normally used for take off, to no avail. The stall warning horn activated and I came down in the trees off the north end of the airport. I had a fire originating from the fuel line to the distrabution valve on top of the engine. I exited the aircraft unhurt but neglected to turn off the master switch or the boost pump which was feeding the fire. ... It seems like I lost fuel pressure from the line at the distrabution valve which did not come off but was leaking. This caused the engine to quit."
Probable cause
The fuel starvation. Factors were the loose line at the distribution valve, the inadequate annual inspection the owner/pilot mechanic performed, the unsuitable terrain the pilot encountered during the emergency landing after takeoff, and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA112
- Event ID
- 20010405X00696
- Case number
- CHI01LA112
- 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: 98d918ba031205af6f40e0ac03adae709458612ce1e45302f619e2f38c866120; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:03:44.962Z.