ATL04LA152 · Stein Skybolt
Stein Skybolt · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Pickens County Airport (JZP) to Dalton Municipal Airport (DNN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA152
- 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
Stein Skybolt
- Aircraft type
- Stein Skybolt SKYBOLT
- 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
- N8048G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pickens County Airport (JZP), Jasper, GATo Dalton Municipal Airport (DNN), Dalton, GA
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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, line › Contamination, other than water
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, attempted
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 acting airport manager at Pickens County Airport, N8048G, refueled with about 20 gallons of 100 octane low lead fuel. After several start attempts the airplane taxied from the fuel pits a short distance before the engine quit again. The pilot, requested a pair of pliers and removed the fuel filter and found it to be 90 percent clogged. After cleaning the fuel filter and replacing it, he told the acting airport manager that he was going to return to Dalton Municipal. According to the pilot, during cruise flight the engine quit. The pilot executed a forced landing into a rough field, and hit hard collapsing the landing gear, buckling the firewall and engine mounts. Examination of the airplane found sealing compound in the upper fuel tank. The sealing compound was also found in the fuel line and fuel filter. The pilot stated that he should have investigated and cleaned the fuel system prior to taking off.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempt to operate the airplane with known deficiencies in the equipment, and the fuel system contamination that resulted in fuel starvation to the engine. A factor was rough and uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA152
- Event ID
- 20040726X01063
- Case number
- ATL04LA152
- 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: 8d5044a4b3fca9a1ec65fc7ff1adb3e047e2881aaea5cf826093fd2b3ad01b94; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:15:35.944Z.