LAX08LA118 · Cessna C175A
Cessna C175A · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45) to E45
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA118
- 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
Cessna C175A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N6868E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45), Groveland, CATo E45
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was also a certificated airframe and powerplant mechanic, was conducting a series of high-speed taxi tests after installing a recently purchased engine. While performing the tests, the airplane's ground speed became excessive and it encountered a gust of wind. The airplane unintentionally became airborne and continued to climb. The pilot attempted to return back to the airport but the engine experienced a total loss of power. The airplane subsequently collided with a telephone pole and descended nose-low onto the road below. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector performed a postaccident examination of the airframe and engine. During the disassembly of the fuel line connecting the gascolator to the carburetor, he observed a condition inside the line known as a "flapper valve" at both end fittings. The inspector stated that this was the fuel line that the pilot had recently fabricated. He stated that the "flapper valve" condition can occur as a result of the end fittings being installed without using a mandrel, where the fitting edge cuts the inside of the hose creating a valve-like piece that obstructs fuel flow.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of a blocked fuel line that was improperly fabricated by the pilot. Also causal was the pilot's excessive ground speed during the taxi tests that resulted in an inadvertent takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA118
- Event ID
- 20080425X00555
- Case number
- LAX08LA118
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-04-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2183dc0850eaa32565db443dd9f8bbbba190e7fef2da500b19c68e7f39b9492b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:34:53.498Z.