DEN03LA055 · Mohr Starduster Too
Mohr Starduster Too · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From La Junta Municipal Airport (LHX) to Taos Regional Airport (SKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA055
- 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
Mohr Starduster Too
- Aircraft type
- Mohr STARDUSTER TOO
- 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
- N3696
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Junta Municipal Airport (LHX), La Junta, COTo Taos Regional Airport (SKX), Taos, NM
- 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
- 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 › Flight manuals, not used
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, incorrect
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was ferrying the airplane to its new owner. He stopped en route and refueled the airplane with approximately 18 gallons of fuel. This filled the tank to capacity. He "stuck" (or dipsticked) the tank "to determine fuel capacity and figured it must be close to what we were told (30 gallons). Apparently, it doesn't hold quite that much." After takeoff, he lost sight of the airplane he had been following. He elected to continue the flight. The airplane was not equipped with a navigation or communication radio. During this leg of the flight, the navigation chart blew out of the open cockpit. The pilot said he thought he could remember where he was going, but misidentified a landmark and crossed the mountains south of where he thought he was. As he circled a town to reorient himself, the engine lost power "due to fuel exhaustion." The airplane had been aloft 2 hours, 20 minutes. The pilot made a forced landing on a golf course, which he described as "unsuitable terrain." During the landing, the airplane struck an earth berm that tore off the landing gear. The lower right wing tip on the biplane was crushed and the propeller was bent.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper inflight planning in that he failed to consult the airplane flight manual, his use of incorrect fuel consumption figures, and fuel exhaustion. Contributing factors were the loss of the en route chart, the unavailability of a nav/comm radio, the pilot becoming lost/disoriented, and the berm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA055
- Event ID
- 20030403X00429
- Case number
- DEN03LA055
- 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: 4846dab7266b46801eee66c3c53d496780d2cdfd0c13afc98fd048500c627615; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:29:17.915Z.