LAX05LA267 · Barnes Lancair Legacy
Barnes Lancair Legacy · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA267
- 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
Barnes Lancair Legacy
- Aircraft type
- Barnes LANCAIR LEGACY
- 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
- N508DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45), Groveland, CA
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- 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
- Engine instruments, fuel quantity gage › Out of calibration
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following fuel exhaustion in cruise flight, the pilot made a forced landing in an open field. The pilot elected to land with the landing gear retracted. The airplane was substantially damaged as it slid to a stop and hit a fence. The pilot said that prior to takeoff he believed he had 18 gallons of fuel onboard for the trip that he calculated would require 8 gallons. Upon his examination of the airplane the pilot noted that the fuel quantity sensors were improperly calibrated. The pilot reported that he did not experience any malfunction or failure with his airplane.
Probable cause
The inaccurate fuel quantity sensors and the pilot's failure to verify the fuel quantity on board prior to takeoff, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA267
- Event ID
- 20050823X01299
- Case number
- LAX05LA267
- 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. 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: c6df8a2e3580c98cb72c34d66d29232193cea5f540de2d16e4f3e2a84878d354; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:29:23.555Z.