NYC02LA001 · Clark T Bird II
Clark T Bird II · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Elberon, VA (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA001
- 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
Clark T Bird II
- Aircraft type
- Clark T BIRD
- 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
- N673KD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elberon, VA (no airport)To 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The engine start, taxi, and run-up seemed normal. The pilot then tookoff on runway 09, a 1,800-foot long, 50-foot wide turf runway. About 50 feet above the ground, the engine lost partial power, and the pilot lowered the nose of the airplane. He then turned right to avoid tree stumps, and the airplane impacted in a soybean field, located off the right side of the runway. The pilot added that within the 60-day period prior to the accident, on two occasions, he had difficulty priming the engine. However, after each occurrence, the fittings and primer hose appeared normal. The airport manager examined the airplane after the accident. He observed that the primer hose, which connected the fuel primer to both carburetors, was loose. The manager could not be certain if it was loose before the impact, or if the impact loosened the hose. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the engine. He was able to rotate the propeller by hand, and attain thumb compression on both cylinders. The inspector observed fuel in the fuel bowl, it appeared similar to automotive gasoline, and was absent of contamination. Due to safety concerns, the inspector did not attempt to check the spark plugs.
Probable cause
A partial power loss for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA001
- Event ID
- 20011010X02066
- Case number
- NYC02LA001
- 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: 4c6b35313c6246d4bf627f8262d25592ae06718f135de18340ba6b7aaa19aeca; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:48:09.647Z.