ERA17LA280 · Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2004 BRAVO
New Kent Flight Center Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2004 BRAVO · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From New Kent County Airport (W96) to New Kent County Airport (W96)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA280
- 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
- 1 · 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
Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P2004 BRAVO
- Aircraft type
- Tecnam P2004
- 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
- N319TA
- Operator
- New Kent Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Kent County Airport (W96), Quinton, VATo New Kent County Airport (W96), Quinton, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and commercial pilot were conducting an instructional familiarization flight in the light sport airplane; this was the commercial pilots first flight in the airplane under instruction. According to the commercial pilot, they checked the weather and performed a preflight inspection using the checklists. Both fuel tanks were checked and were indicating 1/2 full on the left and slightly more than 1/2 full on the right and no anomalies were noted during the inspection. After departure, they performed several touch-and-go takeoffs and landings and the airplane performed normally but shortly after last takeoff and a climbing left turn to crosswind at 600 ft mean sea level, the engine lost all power and the propeller stopped turning. The instructor took control of the airplane and unsuccessfully attempted a restart; during the restart attempt, the propeller did not move. He performed a forced landing to a field during which the airplane impacted two fences, resulting in the fatal injury to the instructor.
Examination of the engine and its components revealed water in the fuel filter, gascolator, fuel pump, and in both carburetors. Additionally, the fuel drained from the right wing tank contained water. Although the No. 2 cylinder bore and piston face exhibited a significant amount of lead build-up, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of the extensive water contamination of the fuel system, which should have been detected during the pilots preflight inspection.
Probable cause
The flight instructor and commercial pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in water contamination of the fuel supply, and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA280
- Event ID
- 20170818X21238
- Case number
- ERA17LA280
- 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: 61bcd7ed8765d0be580669e0fde4bab4d0be053ed63a30903408d3672065a088; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:13:39.273Z.