LAX07LA031 · Ryan Navion B
Ryan Navion B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Flabob Airport (RIR) to San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA031
- 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
Ryan Navion B
- Aircraft type
- Ryan 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
- N5348K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flabob Airport (RIR), Riverside, CATo San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, 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
- 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
- Fuel system, gascolator › Leak
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Worn
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff climb the engine lost power and the pilot made a forced landing in an open field. About 50-100 feet agl, with no remaining runway, the engine began to run rough. Shortly thereafter the engine lost all power. The pilot stated that he had already raised the landing gear before the engine began to run rough. He lowered the landing gear and made the forced landing in the field. The landing gear was only partially extended when the airplane touched down. Post accident examination revealed that air was leaking into the fuel system through worn seals in the fuel selector valve and gascolator. The Type Certificate Holder for the airplane issued Service Bulletin (SB) 101A, which recommended inspection of the fuel selector valve for leaks that allow air intrusion. An annual inspection had taken place 4 hours prior to the accident. Inspection of the airframe logbooks revealed no record of SB 101A having been performed.
Probable cause
A leak in the fuel selector valve and gascolator that resulted in fuel starvation on takeoff due to air leakage into the fuel system. A contributing factor in the accident was the inadequate annual inspection performed by other maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA031
- Event ID
- 20061114X01649
- Case number
- LAX07LA031
- 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: 3c81e1f9d8936014654787e5d5448664ebe0b863d27bd1b1362def3d8eaed370; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:14:37.883Z.