ERA14LA059 · Moffitt Oscar/ KIT Prostar A/C PT2
Moffitt Oscar/ KIT Prostar A/C PT2 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Twin Lakes Airport (S17) to Edgefield County Airport (6J6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA059
- 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
Moffitt Oscar/ KIT Prostar A/C PT2
- Aircraft type
- Moffitt Oscar/ Kit Prostar A/c PT2
- 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
- N355PT
- Operator
- Putt Larry F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Twin Lakes Airport (S17), Graniteville, SCTo Edgefield County Airport (6J6), Trenton, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 1994)
- 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 final
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was conducting a presale inspection of his experimental, amateur-built airplane. He ensured no debris was present in the gascolator and then conducted a test flight. During the test flight and while on final approach to land, the engine lost all power, and the pilot subsequently made a forced landing in a field. A postaccident examination of the gascolator revealed that the strainer bowl was not installed and safety wired in accordance with a service letter issued by the gascolator manufacturer. As a result, the gascolator strainer bowl became separated from the bail, which caused fuel starvation to the engine and total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The airplane owner/pilot ‘s failure to follow the gascolator manufacturer’s recommendations for installing and safety wiring the gascolator strainer bowl, which resulted in the bowl separating and a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA059
- Event ID
- 20131202X34203
- Case number
- ERA14LA059
- 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: 444badd5c4f5fbb52dc04fbfcd03b62a72ffd601f5650b95da1fee028b59ee99; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:09:18.744Z.