ERA16LA268 · Frank Ware VELOCITY TXL
Frank Ware VELOCITY TXL · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26) to Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA268
- 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
Frank Ware VELOCITY TXL
- Aircraft type
- Frank Ware VELOCITY TXL
- 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
- N916TC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26), Sebastian, FLTo Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26), Sebastian, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2013)
- 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 (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
The commercial pilot stated that before departing on the personal flight, the engine did not start on the first attempt; he primed the engine, and then it started immediately. During the takeoff roll, he noted that he used more of the runway than usual. After rotation, the airplane was not climbing, and then the engine lost total power. He did not have time to restart the engine and performed a forced landing to a field, which resulted in substantial damage. An engine test run and an examination of the fuel pump were performed. The examination revealed that the aneroid adjustment within the fuel pump was set for too rich of a mixture. The rich mixture setting caused the engine to run normally until the manifold pressure went above 36 inches of pressure (in excess of the maximum manifold pressure for which the engine was certified); then it would stumble then lose power. After the aneroid adjustment was set for a leaner mixture, the fuel pump operated normally on the test bench without any anomalies. A review of maintenance work orders revealed that the fuel pump was removed, repaired, and reinstalled about 2 months before the accident. Given this information, it is likely that maintenance personnel set the aneroid adjustment too high at that time, which caused the engine to run with an excessively rich mixture, which resulted in a total loss of engine power on climbout.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to maintenance personnel’s improper setting of the aneroid adjustment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA268
- Event ID
- 20160724X24036
- Case number
- ERA16LA268
- 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: 45630fb09c3ab149bf932e36fd5ec516eb1e9c05724e025b8ce1c9c09f545390; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:41:38.989Z.