DEN08LA053 · Phillips Flite Bike
Phillips Flite Bike · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Valley Center, KS to Valley Center, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA053
- 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
Phillips Flite Bike
- Aircraft type
- Phillips FLITE BIKE
- 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
- N31559
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valley Center, KSTo Valley Center, KS
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot the airplane preflight and engine start were normal. He shut the engine down and turned the left fuel tank valve to the off position while he was waiting for a flight partner. He stated that he became distracted once his flight partner had arrived, as he was having difficulties with his engine. Shortly thereafter, he restarted his engine and departed for his local flight. After the departure, the engine lost power. He stated that he lowered the nose to achieve "maximum" airspeed and maneuvered the airplane to avoid several trees. He "could feel the airplane sinking and stalling" and did not have enough "altitude, time, and airspeed to recover." The airplane was substantially damaged. An examination of the airplane systems conducted by the FAA revealed no anomalies. The fuel valve was in the off position. The pilot reported that he "failed to turn on the left fuel tank valve." He stated that he had 7 minutes of fuel in the header tank; just enough to start the engine, taxi, and takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during an emergency descent resulting in an inadvertent stall/mush. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to turn on the fuel tank valve resulting in fuel starvation and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA053
- Event ID
- 20080129X00115
- Case number
- DEN08LA053
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: eb4565c0405a734cef23bde669e03dba02a219c0fd26b9e3891307789782568e; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:21:00.155Z.