CEN18LA118 · Bereznak Lancair Legacy
Airborne Legacy Bereznak Lancair Legacy · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS) to Dallas Love Field (KDAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA118
- 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
Bereznak Lancair Legacy
- Aircraft type
- Bereznak LANCAIR LEGACY
- 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
- N60JN
- Operator
- Airborne Legacy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS), Austin, TXTo Dallas Love Field (KDAL), Dallas, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 10 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After leveling off at 9,500 ft, the airline transport pilot switched the fuel selector from the right to the left fuel tank of the experimental, amateur-built airplane. He noticed a change in the sound of the engine, a decline in fuel flow, and a partial loss of engine power. He switched back to the right fuel tank and turned on the auxiliary fuel pump, but this did not correct the problem. Realizing that he would not be able to glide to a nearby airport, the pilot made a forced landing in a plowed field. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no discrepancies that would have precluded normal operation. The fuel selector was found separated just below the selector handle, and the selector valve was found in the 90-percent-closed position. The fuel selector assembly showed extensive wear. It is likely that the fuel selector separated with the valve in an intermediate position when the pilot changed the fuel selector handle position, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the nearly closed fuel valve.
Probable cause
The failure of the fuel selector valve in a nearly closed position, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA118
- Event ID
- 20180311X63322
- Case number
- CEN18LA118
- 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: 1b2f870263c71a836c80a2f0093d82b639e8e5b07e0a92366693e0b30d68ee32; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:37:05.911Z.