ANC18LA010 · Rockwell International 112A
Rockwell International 112A · Accident: fuel related on approach
From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH) to Clearwater Air Park (CLW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18LA010
- 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
Rockwell International 112A
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell 112
- 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
- N1401J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH), Zephyrhills, FLTo Clearwater Air Park (CLW), Clearwater, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1975)
- 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
- 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 related
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, before departing on the personal flight, he added about 30 gallons of fuel to the airplane, which filled the left fuel tank completely and the right tank to about 7/8 full. He flew for about 20 minutes with the fuel selector on the left tank position. While preparing for landing, the pilot accomplished the before landing checklist, which included increasing the mixture to full rich, turning on the auxiliary fuel pump, and switching the fuel selector from the left tank position to the both position. He then reduced the throttle to slow the airplane and felt "slight resistance" on the throttle lever. About 10 seconds after switching the fuel selector, the airplane began to lose airspeed faster than anticipated. When he looked at the fuel flow indicator, the pilot saw it slowly transition from 8 gallons per hour to zero, and the engine subsequently lost all power. He moved the fuel selector back to the left fuel tank position, but the engine would not restart. During the forced landing, the airplane impacted a tree in the median of a 4-lane street before impacting and coming to rest in a stand of trees adjacent to the roadway.
Postaccident testing of the engine and fuel injection servo revealed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although some debris was noted during the examination of the fuel injection servo, it was likely not enough to cause the engine to lose total power. Thus, the reason for the total loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC18LA010
- Event ID
- 20171119X05046
- Case number
- ANC18LA010
- 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: 2d3a758f57d43cd8ba246c611858ebe6aafbfd28e104c643d90c75b157fae53a; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:00:56.010Z.