CHI03LA165 · Engineering & Research 415-C
Engineering & Research 415-C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Colonel James Jabara Airport (AAO) to Independence Municipal Airport (IDP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA165
- 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
Engineering & Research 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Engineering Research 415
- 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
- N87198
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colonel James Jabara Airport (AAO), Wichita, KSTo Independence Municipal Airport (IDP), Independence, KS
- 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)
- 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
- Fuel system › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during a forced landing in a farm field following a total loss of engine power six miles from the destination airport. Inspection of the airplane revealed that at least one fuel cap was placed on backwards. No other anomalies to fuel system were noted. According to the pilot's operating handbook, if the fuel caps are placed on the airplane backwards, the fuel system may malfunction because the fuel system will be unable to vent and provide equal fuel flow to the tanks. Unequal flow may result in the fuel pump being unable to pump fuel to the fuselage tank.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. A factor to the accident was the pilot's improper installation of the fuel cap.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA165
- Event ID
- 20030618X00905
- Case number
- CHI03LA165
- 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: b0a690974515cc00596a28ec273190e63b68d2c8c01206ab0ea07db259fec4ef; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:08:58.877Z.