MIA02LA116 · Navion Nav4
Navion Nav4 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Willard Field (62OH) to Triple W Airport (5W5)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA116
- 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
Navion Nav4
- Aircraft type
- Navion NAV4
- 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
- N5235K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Willard Field (62OH), Bremen, OHTo Triple W Airport (5W5), Raleigh, NC
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 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, incorrect
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after completion of a cross-country flight of about 2 hours and 20 minutes, he began a descent and pulled the knob to start fuel transfer from the reserve (auxiliary) tank. He entered the airport pattern, flew one circuit of the pattern to check the wind sock. He turned onto the base leg, and a few seconds later turned onto final. After turning onto final the engine lost power. He immediately checked the fuel selector, added full throttle to the engine, checked the propeller control, mixture and booster pump to the high boost position. He felt he could not make it to the runway, and braced for a crash landing. The airplane struck trees and fell to the ground. An examination of the engine revealed no discrepancies. Fuel calculations revealed that fuel consumption for the length of this flight would be close to exhausting the fuel in the main tanks, and that the fuel in the main tanks was near empty when the pilot switched to the auxiliary tank. The auxiliary tank was gravity fed into the right main tank, and not to the selector valve. Upon entering a steep bank turn, from base leg to final, all the small amount of fuel went to the low side with no way to the accumulator tank from that position. In addition, the placards in the airplane were clear that an auxiliary tank is to be used in straight, level flight. The aircraft TCDS (type certificate data sheets) precludes the operation of the auxiliary tank except in "straight and level flight." It is not approved for use for take-off or landing. The pilot had a total of 484 hours in all aircraft, with a total of 44 hours in this make and model airplane. Of the 44 hours in this make and model, 25 flight hours were as pilot-in-command.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning, improper fuel consumption calculations, and selection of the auxiliary fuel tank for landing, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, and forced landing in trees. A factor in this accident was the pilot's lack of total experience in type of aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA116
- Event ID
- 20020627X00983
- Case number
- MIA02LA116
- 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: cc1888588ea6f32ffad59f3169445462b429514ee5c586850126c208cde18e60; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:48:57.677Z.