WPR09CA225 · Rans S-7
Rans S-7 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Big Southern Butte Airport (U46) to Coxs Well Airport (U48)
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
- WPR09CA225
- 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
Rans S-7
- Aircraft type
- Rans S-7
- 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
- N4272M
- Operator
- Errol Spaulding
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Southern Butte Airport (U46), Atomic City, IDTo Coxs Well Airport (U48), Atomic City, ID
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner and a pilot rated passenger flew to a local airport for a brief stop, and then continued to another nearby airport where the passenger performed a touch-and-go. He had begun a slight right turn during the climbout from the touch-and-go when the engine lost power about 250 feet above ground level (agl). The owner took control, turned back to the left, and tried to land on the end of the runway. He leveled off slightly about 20 feet agl, and then flared for landing. The airplane landed hard on the north side of the runway and the right wheel broke off. The landing gear dug into the turf, the airplane spun 180 degrees, and the right main landing gear collapsed. The airframe around the tailwheel and rudder sustained substantial damage. The owner indicated that the airplane had a header tank that was the only fuel supply for the engine in addition to the wing tanks that were used to supply the header tank. He used an electric fuel pump to manually transfer fuel from the wing tanks to the header tank. He stated that he usually did not let the header tank get less than half full since the fuel pick-up port for the engine driven pump is at the front of the tank. He said that he probably let the fuel level get too low on this flight. During the climbout with the nose up, he surmised that the header tank fuel pick-up unported, resulting in the loss of power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's inadequate fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA225
- Event ID
- 20090504X21314
- Case number
- WPR09CA225
- 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: 314569e14cc50a856f3c48309e6690d52203ada66841a675573c7cd8b311c7e1; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:00:50.130Z.