MIA01LA128 · Steen Aero Lab Skybolt I
Steen Aero Lab Skybolt I · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Wolf River Airport (54M) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA128
- 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
Steen Aero Lab Skybolt I
- Aircraft type
- Steen Aero Lab SKYBOLT
- 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
- N14DE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wolf River Airport (54M), Collierville, TNTo 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 exhaustion; Utility pole
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, as a result of his preflight walk-around inspection, he felt confident that he had at least 12 gallons of fuel on board. Since his planned flight was for about 20 minutes, and knowing fuel burn is about 8.5 gallons an hour, he felt he had adequate fuel aboard. Actually, the fuel aboard was about 4 gallons, and 10 minutes into the flight, the engine quit while he was overhead a residential area of Germantown at 1500 feet msl. He reasoned that his only alternative was a forced landing to a residential street, and during the landing, the aircraft sequentially collided with an automobile rear window with the landing gear, a utility pole and mailbox with the wings, and a street sign with the horizontal stabilizer. Postcrash examination by FAA inspectors and the pilot revealed no evidence of fuel aboard.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to conduct proper preflight planning and preparation, resulting in fuel exhaustion during cruise flight, and the subsequent emergency descent and forced landing to a residential street colliding with a vehicle, utility pole, mail box, and street sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA128
- Event ID
- 20010502X00852
- Case number
- MIA01LA128
- 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: 226d5c4be52eb133a79f00989dce9216d25789c4eb353109342a0473f948570b; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:00:22.003Z.