CHI06CA237 · Spittler Rans S-16
Spittler Rans S-16 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Plattsmouth Municipal Airport (PMV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06CA237
- 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
Spittler Rans S-16
- Aircraft type
- Spittler RANS S-16
- 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
- N116GS
- Operator
- Richard H. Harriman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plattsmouth Municipal Airport (PMV), Plattsmouth, NETo 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
- Total 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
- Fluid › Starvation
- Fuel system, fuel control › Fluctuating
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 rough terrain during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported that they were practicing touch and go landings when the engine power decreased by 100 to 150 rpm during takeoff. The pilot confirmed the boost pump position, the mixture setting, and the fuel quantity. He reported that at an altitude of about 500 feet above the ground the engine power decreased smoothly to zero. The pilot reported there were crop fields on both sides of his path with a slew in the middle so he elected to land straight ahead in the slew. The airplane touched down in the four-foot-tall grass at which time the nose and right main landing gears collapsed resulting in structural damage to the airplane. The fuel servo was removed from the airplane and bench tested. The test revealed the servo had a tendency to stick when transitioning between high and low pressure settings.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation which resulted from a binding within the fuel servo. A factor associated with the accident was the high vegetation that was encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06CA237
- Event ID
- 20060905X01285
- Case number
- CHI06CA237
- 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: fbe68af8eb13e22cd4961aa3d35d69448a022a655abd3e62378730a438a215cf; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:37:33.946Z.