LAX05LA303 · North American Navion A
North American Navion A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Calaveras Co Maury Rasmussen Field (CPU) to Ramona Airport (RNM)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA303
- 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
- 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
- N91597
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Calaveras Co Maury Rasmussen Field (CPU), Calaveras Cty, CATo Ramona Airport (RNM), Ramona, 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
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 collided with a pole during a forced landing on a road following a loss of engine power. Prior to departure, the pilot filled his main tanks and tip tanks and indicated that his auxiliary fuel tank had been previously filled. Normally, the pilot would fill up his auxiliary fuel tank or the tip tanks, but not both at the same time. The pilot said his habit was to rotate between using the auxiliary tank and the tip tanks about every 3 to 4 months. Because he had been using the auxiliary fuel tank for the last several months, he decided to use the wing tip tanks for this flight. The pilot did not run the engine from the tip tanks prior to departing the airport. About 40 minutes into the flight he switched from the main fuel tank to the right tip tank. Prior to selecting the tip tank, he turned on the auxiliary fuel pump. As had happened in the past when he had not used the wing tip tanks for an extended period, he expected the engine to sputter and then restart. However, on this occasion, after the engine sputtered, it did not restart. The pilot then switched the fuel selector back to the main tank and verified that he was getting fuel pressure, but the engine would not restart. On-scene examination by the Federal Aviation Administration did not reveal any mechanical anomalies. Fuel was found in all four fuel tanks. Follow-up examination of the airplane's fuel system showed that the lines and tanks were free from obstruction with no contamination evident.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA303
- Event ID
- 20050922X01514
- Case number
- LAX05LA303
- 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: 9ea8ddcda0d8cbdb07c8d2d7b4278f554253b466be15a87bd760262a9b65f4a4; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:53:44.052Z.