WPR13FA141 · Maule M5 210C
Maule M5 210C · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT) to Renton Municipal Airport (RNT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13FA141
- 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
Maule M5 210C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M5
- 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
- N17PR
- Operator
- Jay R. Uusitalo · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT), Renton, WATo Renton Municipal Airport (RNT), Renton, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1979)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger reported that he could not remember if the pilot checked the fuel before the flight, but he remembered that, during the engine start, the engine turned over several times before it started. About 30 minutes into the flight, the engine started to sputter, and then it stopped; the pilot was unable to restart the engine, and the airplane began to lose altitude. The passenger recalled that he observed the stall warning light illuminate and that the airplane was in a turn, but he did not recall the impact.
One witness reported that he observed the airplane circle and that it appeared very low. Another witness reported hearing a "pop" sound and then a "puff" or a "sputter" and then seeing that the propeller had stopped. A third witness reported that he saw the airplane in a hard banking turn and that he could tell that the airplane "was going down." The airplane impacted a single-family residence about 16 nautical miles northeast of the departure airport.
GPS data revealed that the airplane made several course heading changes at varying altitudes and airspeeds during the flight. During the last 16 seconds of the flight track, the airplane turned left, which was likely indicative of the pilot attempting to make a forced landing to a nearby pond. The last GPS data were recorded when the airplane was at an altitude of 650 feet mean sea level and a groundspeed of 40 knots.
The airplane's previous flight occurred 102 days before the accident. During this period of inactivity, the airplane remained parked outside on an airport ramp exposed to inclement weather conditions conducive to the formation of condensation in the airplane's partially filled fuel tanks. No records were found indicating that the airplane had been refueled before the accident flight. Fuel was recovered from the airplane at the accident site. Analysis of a fuel sample revealed the presence of water. The fuel contamination likely resulted in the loss of engine power and the pilot's inability to restart the engine after the power loss. The pilot likely failed to maintain adequate airspeed following the loss of engine power. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed following a total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination, which resulted in a stall/spin and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13FA141
- Event ID
- 20130310X02720
- Case number
- WPR13FA141
- 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: 6ef9b4c0c36bd61aa77c7e24f87ae74a66089d7b595a1009a18e25efe7eecafa; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:54:11.589Z.