LAX01LA288 · Ryan ST3KR
Ryan ST3KR · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA288
- 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
Ryan ST3KR
- Aircraft type
- Ryan ST3
- 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
- N48742
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Other maintenance personnel › Throttle/power control, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported he was giving rides in the antique aircraft to thank museum volunteers of the Confederate Air Force squadron. Before takeoff, the aircraft was fueled to capacity, which he reported was sufficient for 2 hours endurance. About 20 minutes after takeoff, while in normal cruise flight and without warning, the engine lost power. During the ensuing forced landing in an open field, the landing gear struck a culvert and a wing was damaged. Post-accident inspection revealed that a clevis on the throttle linkage separated from the rod at the cockpit control quadrant. The operator, a (civilian) military aircraft museum, believed that the throttle linkage had been field fabricated, or refurbished and installed during restoration of the World War II-era airplane, 358 flight hours prior. A rivet, intended to lock the clevis to the shaft, was never installed during the fabrication/reassembly of the linkage, and the absence of the rivet was not detected during subsequent annual inspections.
Probable cause
The improper fabrication/reassembly and inspection of the engine throttle control linkage during aircraft restoration by the operator, and the failure of the operator's inspection personnel to detect the error during subsequent annual inspections.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA288
- Event ID
- 20010913X01943
- Case number
- LAX01LA288
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-08-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e6d081888fda9eee00d6f4e9fdf9a931baaa6f30b52da1e279db10fd8489f950; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:37:18.442Z.