ERA17TA196 · Ernest T Christley ZENITH ZODIAC 601XL
Ernest T Christley ZENITH ZODIAC 601XL · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Deck Airpark (NC11) to Deck Airpark (NC11)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17TA196
- 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
Ernest T Christley ZENITH ZODIAC 601XL
- Aircraft type
- Ernest T Christley ZENITH ZODIAC 601XL
- 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
- N167EZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deck Airpark (NC11), Apex, NCTo Deck Airpark (NC11), Apex, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2016)
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot, who was the builder of the experimental, amateur-built airplane, reported that the airplane was in cruise flight when the engine experienced a total loss of power. He noted that the right fuel tank was empty and that the fuel selector handle was on the left tank. He attempted a restart; however, this was unsuccessful, and he performed a forced landing in a field. The nose landing gear collapsed during the landing roll, resulting in structural damage to the lower fuselage and engine firewall.
Examination of the wreckage revealed that the fuel tank selector handle was on the left tank but the fuel valve remained on the empty right tank. Further examination of the hardware revealed that a threaded metal rod that the pilot installed to connect the tank selector handle to the fuel valve "twisted like bubble gum" when rotated and would not turn the fuel valve. The pilot, who was the airplane builder, used a thinner rod than specified due to an interference problem. This rod was not part of the airplane kit and was improvised by the pilot. The pilot reported that the handle/valve assembly had operated normally during initial testing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s selection of a threaded metal rod of insufficient strength to connect the fuel tank selector handle to the fuel valve, which resulted in his inability to switch fuel tanks and a subsequent total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17TA196
- Event ID
- 20170606X10749
- Case number
- ERA17TA196
- 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: c2146278133c7bb3229ec967d18d7038b005d24ee9a9f9f44eb03b2f5a443213; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:22:32.353Z.