CHI05LA233 · North American Navion A (L-17B)
North American Navion A (L-17B) · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during takeoff
From Ottawa Executive Airport (Z98) to Grand Haven, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA233
- 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
North American Navion A (L-17B)
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N8828H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ottawa Executive Airport (Z98), Zeeland, MITo Grand Haven, MI
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Airspeed › Low
- Altitude › Low
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Leak
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 impacted terrain following a total loss of engine power after takeoff. Examination of the airplane revealed internal and external leakage of the fuel selector. The airplane manufacturer issued a service bulletin about 13 months before the accident calling for the removal and replacement of fuel selectors which encompassed the accident airplane. This service bulletin was not complied with by the airplane owner who was also the pilot-in-command of the airplane. An engine test run was performed and no anomalies that precluded normal operation were noted. The engine exceeded the engine manufacturer recommend time between overhaul of twelve years. The airplane was not certified and not equipped with shoulder harnesses. The pilot and passenger sustained serious injuries.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power after takeoff due to a fuel selector valve leak and low altitude and low airspeed at the time of power loss. A factor was the recommended maintenance service for the fuel selector not performed by the airplane owner/pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA233
- Event ID
- 20050822X01295
- Case number
- CHI05LA233
- 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: 6a376564e2205bbcb44d350bca8be9e3ccbd8991cd88c5a33ea9130a71ab85d8; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:04:10.679Z.