DEN05LA121 · Sheel Vans RV-8
Sheel Vans RV-8 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA121
- 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
- 1 · 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
Sheel Vans RV-8
- Aircraft type
- Sheel VANS RV-8
- 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
- N5754S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Fort Collins, COTo 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
- 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
- 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 exhaustion; Stall
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, 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 airplane departed runway 33. During the initial climb out, the airplane made a steep roll to the left, pitched down, descended and impacted terrain. A witness said he saw the airplane "in a high left bank like it was trying to land on runway 15. Suddenly, the plane made an abrupt (steep) descent (approximately 45 degrees) nose down. About 50 feet above the ground, it seemed the pilot tried to level off. The plane impacted the ground at a lower angle of attack (I would say 15-20 degrees). An FAA inspector, who was at the airport but did not witness the accident, immediately responded to the accident site. He said he found the fuel selector valve on the left tank and the left fuel tank was empty. The right fuel tank contained approximately "one inch" of fuel. One blade of the propeller was bent under the engine cowling, and the other was slightly damaged. The engine had been extensively modified. Disassembly revealed continuity and compression of all cylinders. The left magneto produced spark when turned. In place of a right magneto, the airplane was equipped with an automotive electronic ignition. All eight spark plugs were of the automotive-type. There was no fuel in the engine-driven fuel pump, electrically-driven fuel pump, or fuel injectors. The engine data recorder was sent to the manufacturer. Data downloaded was found to be corrupt and meaningless.
Probable cause
the pilot inadvertently stalling the airplane and descending into the ground. Contributing factors were the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and his failure to refuel the airplane, resulting in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA121
- Event ID
- 20050816X01250
- Case number
- DEN05LA121
- 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: 43febc335111c2bd442fd111b0c454371eb87aae334acecb770314a4cf322e62; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:56:30.311Z.