LAX08LA056 · Smith Zodiac 601XL
Smith Zodiac 601XL · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From French Valley Airport (F70) to F70
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA056
- 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
Smith Zodiac 601XL
- Aircraft type
- Smith ZODIAC 601
- 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
- N601KS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta/Temecu, CATo F70
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff climb, the engine was starved of fuel and lost power. Following the power loss, the pilot activated the auxiliary fuel pump and tried unsuccessfully to restart the engine. The pilot was turning in a 10-degree bank toward an off-airport emergency landing site in open terrain, when the left main landing gear touched down first on the upsloping terrain. About 50 feet from the initial touchdown, the nose landing gear dug into the soft terrain and separated, and the airplane came to rest on its nose. The pilot reported that prior to the loss of power, the fuel pressure gage went to zero and he received a low fuel pressure warning. He further reported that on the daytime flight, he was operating all of his electrical systems; strobes, transponder, and radios. He said he believed that with the full operation of all the electrical devices, the electrically driven fuel pump did not have sufficient amperage to run. An inspection of the airplane revealed that the carburetor bowl was empty; even though there was fuel onboard the airplane. With the fuel pump not operating, fuel was not being supplied to the carburetor, thus allowing the engine to lose power as a result of fuel starvation. When functionally checked the fuel pump operated normally. The pilot reported that there was no recent maintenance done on the airplane.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which was induced by the electrical system lacking sufficient power to run all of the electrical devices on the airplane and the electrical fuel pump.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA056
- Event ID
- 20080211X00173
- Case number
- LAX08LA056
- 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: b604513fda517ce4e74872186147646697400380339296df2a8d9fe3eba21fd4; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:21:45.244Z.