LAX08LA268 · Rouse Glasair III
Rouse Glasair III · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV) to 4SD · Reno, NV
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA268
- 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
Rouse Glasair III
- Aircraft type
- Rouse GLASAIR
- 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
- N1YZ
- Operator
- David Cronin
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NVTo 4SD · Reno, NV
- 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 · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that as he turned toward the airport to land, black smoke was coming from under the cowling. The airplane was losing power, airspeed, and altitude; however, he was able to maintain enough airspeed to clear a cliff before touching down short of the runway. The airplane encountered uneven terrain, and the landing gear sheared off. An inspection of the engine revealed that all spark plugs and the entire exhaust path were very sooty, which corresponded to rich operation. Examination of the fuel servo revealed that it had excessively worn throttle/mixture linkage arms and pins. In addition, the mixture control linkage spring washer was missing. This linkage section is vital to maintaining the correct flows at throttle open positions, and the play noted was excessive.
Probable cause
The excessively worn throttle/mixture linkage arms and pins and a missing mixture control linkage spring washer, which resulted in a loss of power due to an excessively rich mixture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA268
- Event ID
- 20080827X01342
- Case number
- LAX08LA268
- 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. 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: c522134157815807266c589c61f13b38ae0081db1685cae79bff20ae01848e5b; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:07:24.386Z.