LAX04LA204 · Rocket Flyers LLC
Rocket Flyers LLC · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Eloy Municipal Airport (KE60) to Mefford Field (KTLR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA204
- 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
Rocket Flyers LLC
- Aircraft type
- Rocket Flyers LLC
- 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
- N724TL
- Operator
- Steve R. Jackson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eloy Municipal Airport (KE60), Eloy, AZTo Mefford Field (KTLR), Mefford, CA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Starvation
- Fuel system, fuel control › Contamination, other than water
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The single engine experimental airplane collided with terrain after experiencing a loss of engine power. About 1,000 feet above ground level (agl), the pilot selected an area to make a forced landing. He identified some power lines that were in the selected landing area so he diverted the airplane to a highway and landed gear up. To avoid a truck, the pilot veered the plane off the highway and into rough terrain where the wing struck a tree. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector supervised an airframe and engine examination. The engine was a Diemech M601D turboprop. He determined that the airplane had fuel in its fuel tank when it landed. He found air in the engine's fuel control system. Maintenance technicians bled the fuel control and fuel pump. They then completed a test run of the engine without incident. The owner/pilot said that because air was found in the fuel control unit there was a possible design flaw in the way fuel is delivered from the fuel tank to the engine.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of air migrating into the fuel control unit. The ultimate reason for the air entry into the fuel control unit was not determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA204
- Event ID
- 20040511X00590
- Case number
- LAX04LA204
- 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: 2621bc9e7d860a18ff022930d8846e132e8813befa8ceaf07c1316066237101b; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:36:12.765Z.