CEN16LA339 · Rans COYOTE S 4
Rans COYOTE S 4 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Clarksville Red River City-J D Trissell Field (LBR) to Clarksville Red River City-J D Trissell Field (LBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA339
- 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
- 0
- 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 COYOTE S 4
- Aircraft type
- Rans COYOTE S 4
- 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
- N8024J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clarksville Red River City-J D Trissell Field (LBR), Clarksville, TXTo Clarksville Red River City-J D Trissell Field (LBR), Clarksville, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1991)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was conducting a local, solo, personal flight. He reported that, while flying over his home about 1,700 ft above ground level, the engine "sputtered," and the tachometer decreased to between 1,300 and 1,500 rpm. The student turned the airplane around and proceeded back toward the airport; however, the airplane continued to descend and was not able to reach the airport. The student conducted a forced landing, and the airplane landed hard in a field.
A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the fuel pump impulse line was deteriorated and had disconnected during the accident flight. The carburetor fuel bowl was dry with no evidence of fuel. The most recent engine maintenance was completed about 9 months before the accident, and the fuel pump impulse line was not mentioned in the logbook entry. The accident is consistent with a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from a deteriorated and disconnected fuel line.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to a deteriorated and disconnected fuel line, which resulted in fuel starvation and a subsequent hard, off-field landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA339
- Event ID
- 20160829X63129
- Case number
- CEN16LA339
- 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: 49e13450756a5f297f6030c546c27f2d7d64c863bfc3527de510ca589a1fd8dc; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:12:22.403Z.