DEN04LA007 · Aviat Pitts S2B
Aviat Pitts S2B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From 5T6 · Santa Teresa, NM to 5T6 · Santa Teresa, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA007
- 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
Aviat Pitts S2B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat PITTS S2B
- 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
- N331DM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 5T6 · Santa Teresa, NMTo 5T6 · Santa Teresa, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, 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 instructor, he was giving instruction to the private pilot who had recently purchased the airplane. They departed with approximately 15 gallons of fuel. After completing four touch-and-go landings, they departed the pattern to do some air work, which included steep turns and a stall. At 3,500 feet agl, approximately 3 to 4 miles north of the airport, the engine lost all power. The instructor stated that he was unable to reach the airport using "best glide." The instructor made a forced landing in a field approximately 1/2 mile east-northeast of the approach end of runway 28. When the airplane impacted the ground, both the left and right main landing gear assemblies collapsed, the upper wing assembly was displaced aft, and the lower left wing, left horizontal stabilizer, and elevator were buckled. An examination of the airplane revealed 4 inches of fuel in the airplane's main fuel tank and no fuel in the wing tank. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
the instructor's improper in-flight planning/decision making and fuel mismanagement which resulted in fuel starvation/exhaustion, the loss of engine power and the subsequent forced landing. Contributing factors include the instructor's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA007
- Event ID
- 20031022X01794
- Case number
- DEN04LA007
- 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: 700c02236c2282e05dbfa475a955973913fe510df9cb56322c0b05508da4189d; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:21:38.117Z.