WPR16LA122 · Rans S 5
Rans S 5 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Lodi Airport (1O3) to Lodi Airport (1O3)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA122
- 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
Rans S 5
- Aircraft type
- Rans S-5
- 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
- N481TJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lodi Airport (1O3), Lodi, CATo Lodi Airport (1O3), Lodi, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2007)
- 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 downwind
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that, during cruise flight in the experimental light sport airplane, he encountered moderate turbulence. Shortly thereafter, the engine experienced a total loss of power. Following an uneventful landing in an open field, the pilot found that a fuel line was pinched between his seat and the fuselage. After repositioning the fuel line, he was able to start the engine and took off to return to the airport. While in the airport traffic pattern, his seat shifted, and the engine lost power a second time. The pilot initiated a forced landing to a nearby road; however, just before touchdown, the pilot "banked hard left" to avoid hitting a vehicle on the road. The airplane subsequently experienced an aerodynamic stall and impacted the ground.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel line located behind the pilot's seat could be compressed by hand. Movement of the seat allowed for the fuel line to be pinched, resulting in an interruption of fuel flow to the engine. After installing a new propeller, a test run of the engine was completed with no anomalies observed.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as the result of a pinched fuel line. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s maneuvering just before landing, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA122
- Event ID
- 20160607X73221
- Case number
- WPR16LA122
- 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: 1add0f9c4a25cd8dfe01460edfdb608096a70f1a409dd2cc95159c7c076b2821; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:28:39.193Z.