ERA14LA402 · Thibault Michael L RV4
Thibault Michael L RV4 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Beltzville Airport (14N) to Beltzville Airport (14N)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA402
- 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
Thibault Michael L RV4
- Aircraft type
- Thibault Michael RV4
- 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
- N62632
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beltzville Airport (14N), Lehighton, PATo Beltzville Airport (14N), Lehighton, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 1998)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot reported that he visually inspected the fuel tanks before takeoff and that each tank was "just less than half" full. After takeoff for the local personal flight, the pilot climbed the airplane to 2,000 ft mean sea level, and, upon leveling off, switched the fuel selector to the left wing tank. Shortly thereafter, the engine experienced a total loss of power, and the pilot conducted a forced landing to a soybean field. During the landing, the airplane nosed over and then came to rest inverted, which resulted in substantial damage to the firewall and right wing.
Examination of the engine and fuel system revealed no anomalies. The engine was turned by hand at the propeller, and compression was confirmed to all cylinders using the thumb method. The left magneto produced spark when rotated. A total of 2 ounces of fuel was recovered from both of the fuel tank sump drains. Fuel staining was observed on the top of the left wing, consistent with fuel leaking from the tank while the airplane was inverted following the accident. However, no fuel was present in the fuel hose from the engine-driven fuel pump to the carburetor inlet; therefore, it is likely that the engine was not getting fuel. Neither the quantity of fuel present in the tank before the accident nor the reason there was no fuel in the fuel hose could be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine revealed no anomalies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA402
- Event ID
- 20140822X21433
- Case number
- ERA14LA402
- 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: 16767e844ce904cfdfe4787e5feb0db0ce01dca001a74c2e4417152bcf1012dc; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:40:22.303Z.