ERA15LA200 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1
Falcon Aviation Academy Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Merkel Field Sylacauga Municipal Airport (SCD) to Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA200
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-20
- 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
- N248ME
- Operator
- Falcon Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merkel Field Sylacauga Municipal Airport (SCD), Sylacauga, ALTo Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO), Newnan, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the return leg of a student pilot's solo cross-country flight, the airplane experienced a partial loss of engine power after reaching an altitude of about 300 ft above ground level. After checking the mixture, fuel pump, and throttle, the student pilot consulted via radio with his flight instructor, who told him to return to the airport. The student pilot attempted to execute an emergency landing at the airport but was too high at the mid-field point of the runway during final approach. He applied full throttle and attempted to go around but received a stall warning and performed a forced landing past the runway in a grassy area, which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. Postaccident test runs of the engine revealed that the throttle body/fuel metering unit failed to provide adequate fuel pressure to allow the engine to operate at full power. Detailed examination of the throttle body/fuel metering unit was unable to determine why the unit was unable to provide adequate fuel pressure to the engine. Although evidence of nicks, burs, and raised areas along the shaft and aggressive cleaning were found, the extent to which they may have contributed to the unit's inability to provide adequate fuel pressure to the engine could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to the failure of the throttle body/fuel metering unit to provide the engine with adequate fuel pressure for full power operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA200
- Event ID
- 20150428X15534
- Case number
- ERA15LA200
- 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: 63f4a3810e21ce1f3ebc4ae13be00b2b13efea01b0b85b4071a7959b4ed33d0d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:15:47.970Z.