CHI01FA290 · Navion L-17B
Navion L-17B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Lakeview-Airport-Griffith Field (13C) to 3FM · Fremont, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA290
- 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
- 1 · 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
Navion L-17B
- Aircraft type
- Navion L-17
- 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
- N1017B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeview-Airport-Griffith Field (13C), Lakeview, MITo 3FM · Fremont, MI
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, not verified
- Powerplant › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a loss of engine power while in cruise flight and the pilot performed a forced landing into a forested area. Witnesses reported the aircraft was experiencing engine difficulties prior to and during the collision with the trees and terrain. Approximately 12 gallons of uncontaminated aviation fuel was drained from the main fuel system. The fuel supply line, forward of the firewall, was disconnected and no fuel drained from the line. The fuel selector, located on the fuselage floor between the two pilot seats, was found approximately halfway between the "AUX" and "OFF" positions. When the electric fuel pump was operated the fuel delivery was limited and sporadic with the fuel selector positioned as found. With the fuel selector positioned on "AUX" or "MAIN" the fuel delivery increased significantly and remained constant. There was no fuel flow with the fuel selector positioned on "OFF." The fuel selector was repositioned in-between "AUX" and "OFF" and fuel delivery was again limited and sporadic. No anomalies were found with the engine or its accessories that could be associated with a pre-impact condition that would have prevented the normal operation of the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot inadvertently positioning the fuel selector in an intermediate position, resulting in a loss of engine power. An additional cause was the pilot's failure to verify the fuel selector position during the engine restart attempt. Factors to the accident include the restricted fuel flow, fuel starvation, and the presence of trees during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA290
- Event ID
- 20010830X01831
- Case number
- CHI01FA290
- 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: 0491f17f4c03df695af7716fe1fd79e4843236b60a36e1fec15cc70b4efe313c; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:24:00.355Z.