CEN18LA181 · Vans RV7A
Vans RV7A · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Schaumburg Regional Airport (06C) to Terre Haute Regional Airport, Hulman Field (HUF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA181
- 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
Vans RV7A
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV7
- 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
- N667AZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Schaumburg Regional Airport (06C), Schaumburg, ILTo Terre Haute Regional Airport, Hulman Field (HUF), Terre Haute, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2006)
- 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 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight when the airplane had a partial loss of engine power shortly after takeoff. Engine operation did not improve after the pilot's corrective actions and a forced landing was completed to a soft field where the airplane nosed over upon touchdown. The fuselage, both wings, and the empennage were substantially damaged during the accident.
Postaccident fuel samples taken from each wing tank sump did not exhibit any contamination. A fuel sample collected from the fuel supply line connected to the fuel injector servo inlet contained a small amount water contamination. The electric fuel pump was used to obtain an additional fuel sample, which also contained water contamination. The fuel filter, which was not equipped with a drain sump, had evidence of water contamination. Besides the water contamination found in the fuel system, the postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal engine operation during the flight.
The pilot reported that the fuel samples he obtained from each wing tank sump during his preflight inspection were not contaminated. The pilot would have been unable to identify water contamination downstream of the fuel tanks, because the experimental airplane was not equipped with a drainable fuel filter. A review of maintenance documentation revealed at least one instance of water and particulate contamination being found in the fuel filter and the fuel injection servo finger screen. Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the partial loss of engine power shortly after takeoff was due to water contamination of the fuel system.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power shortly after takeoff due to water contamination of the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA181
- Event ID
- 20180519X11300
- Case number
- CEN18LA181
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-05-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 99bb43c89f7720d441ad6bdd81300bd2aee74972a253a2ea84af895d3aab8989; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:12:12.896Z.