MIA05CA118 · Herbert O. Kellerman 173 RG
Herbert O. Kellerman 173 RG · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC) to Venice Municipal Airport (VNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05CA118
- 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
Herbert O. Kellerman 173 RG
- Aircraft type
- Herbert O Kellerman 173
- 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
- N27BK
- Operator
- Herbert O. Kellerman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FLTo Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated he preformed a normal engine start, taxi, and engine run-up, with no discrepancies noted. He than checked his radios and taxied to the active runway, the take-off was normal with the airplane engine producing full power. He retracted the landing gear around 400 feet, and shut off the auxiliary fuel pump. Shortly thereafter the airplane engine started to lose power, he immediately turned the auxiliary fuel pump to the on position. The engine started to surge from idle to about 1800 rpm, and continued to surge for the remainder of the flight. The airplane was unable to maintain altitude, and the pilot made a 250-degree turn back to the airport, and landed on the grass overrun area of the approach end of runway 4, before impacting a fence and coming to a stop. The FAA inspector who responded to the accident stated that during his examination of the accident airplane, he found the "B" nut on the fuel line that supplies fuel to the fuel servo loose from it's fitting.
Probable cause
The owner/pilot mechanic's inadequate maintenance inspection resulting in a partial loss of engine power due to a loose fuel line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05CA118
- Event ID
- 20050630X00901
- Case number
- MIA05CA118
- 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: 82d1653ab8c6d4c5fd46f51d3ee5e15b7a0f0e21377c6a6bcdebe43083ad6daf; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:49:28.197Z.