CEN10LA050 · Augustine David L SONEX
Augustine David L SONEX · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Shirley Williams Airport (44TE) to Spicewood, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA050
- 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
- 1 · 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
Augustine David L SONEX
- Aircraft type
- Augustine David SONEX
- 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
- N10DA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shirley Williams Airport (44TE), Kingsland, TXTo Spicewood, TX
- 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
- Landing
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to several witnesses, the pilot radioed that he was experiencing a loss of engine power and was attempting a forced landing. Witnesses who saw the airplane reported that during the forced landing attempt the nose of airplane dropped and the airplane subsequently impacted terrain in a nose-low attitude. An examination of the flight controls and airframe structure revealed no preaccident anomalies that would have prevented the pilot from maintaining aircraft control. An examination of the engine and fuel system revealed a white substance inside the main fuel tank which had clogged the fuel screen. Laboratory examination of this substance revealed that it was polyurethane. The sealant used to seal the fuel tank contained polyurethane designed to be used to bond the sealant to a metal tank. The airframe builder added this sealant to the accident airplane's plastic (polyethylene) tank when he encountered a leak within the fuel system at the fuel fitting. An examination of the remaining engine and systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control, resulting in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the loss of engine power due to a clogged fuel screen that resulted in fuel starvation caused by the builder's inappropriate use of a fuel tank sealant in a plastic tank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA050
- Event ID
- 20091115X22917
- Case number
- CEN10LA050
- 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: e937ace4cd8d78f40a3f687c4af72921c6b8fe30a86d6ca03e0ed6ccdce236ec; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:33:56.447Z.