ATL05LA009 · North American Harvard II T-6
North American Harvard II T-6 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Leesville, SC to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA009
- 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
- 2 · 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
North American Harvard II T-6
- Aircraft type
- North American HARVARD II T-6
- 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
- N92871
- Operator
- T-6
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesville, SCTo not recorded
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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 › Blocked(total)
- Fuel system › 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 operator was offering airplane rides to citizens in the area as part of a community event sponsored by the operator. Shortly after the airplane took off, during a climbing left turn, the engine sputtered several times before the airplane disappeared behind a tree line. The accident site was approximately 1/4 statute mile from the departure end of runway 31. The examination of the fuel system revealed fuel present in the carburetor bowl, hand-driven fuel pump, engine-driven fuel pump, and carburetor fuel strainer. The fuel selector was observed in the reserve normal left tank position, fuel present in tank selected, and all ports were free of debris. Examination of engine components revealed that sediment was in the carburetor bowl, hand-driven fuel pump, engine-driven fuel pump screen, and carburetor fuel strainer. Examination of the low fuel pressure warning light in the cockpit revealed that the filament within the bulb glass contained gross elongation of the filament coils and was heavily distorted, features consistent with receiving an impact while hot.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel system contamination which blocked the flow of fuel which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA009
- Event ID
- 20041028X01712
- Case number
- ATL05LA009
- 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: c2e98b7b43dcf4ab64af94724cf1671e25a1c2d21ccabab5cfd75eb712bcb723; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:17:11.165Z.