WPR19LA218 · Extra EA300 L
Aviation Performance Solutions Extra EA300 L · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
From Mesa Gateway Airport (KIWA) to Mesa Gateway Airport (KIWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA218
- 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
Extra EA300 L
- Aircraft type
- Extra EA300
- 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
- N19AM
- Operator
- Aviation Performance Solutions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesa Gateway Airport (KIWA), Mesa, AZTo Mesa Gateway Airport (KIWA), Mesa, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerobatics
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were maneuvering the airplane as part of an upset prevention and recovery training curriculum. The flight instructor reported that the airplane lost partial engine power as he completed a rolling maneuver demonstration. The flight instructor immediately switched the fuel selector valve from the WING tank position to the ACRO/CENTER (acrobatic) fuel tank position; however, he was unable to restore full engine power and subsequently made an off-airport landing during which the airplane sustained substantial damage. Postaccident onsite examination of the airplane revealed that the acro/center fuel tank contained approximately 13 gallons of avgas. The left-wing tank contained trace amounts of avgas and the right-wing tank contained approximately 6 gallons of avgas. Further examination of the airplane revealed that the electrically driven fuel boost pump, which the flight instructor reported was on during the accident flight, was inoperative. It would be used, in part, for emergencies and inflight restarts following an engine failure. The inoperative boost pump was removed and replaced with a segregate boost pump. The engine was then started and developed continuous power at varied throttle positions between idle to full power. The flight manual states that aerobatic maneuvers must be accomplished with the fuel selector in the ACRO/CENTER (acrobatic) fuel tank position. The accident sequence is consistent with a partial loss of engine power likely due to an interruption of fuel flow while the flight instructor was performing aerobic maneuvers with the fuel sector in the WING tank position. It is likely that the fuel unported from the wing tanks, which resulted in fuel starvation and a partial loss of engine power. The inoperative electric fuel boost pump contributed to the flight instructor's inability to restart the engine.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s operation of the airplane outside of the manufacturer’s limitations, which resulted in fuel starvation and a partial loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was an inoperative electric fuel boost pump.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA218
- Event ID
- 20190814X20707
- Case number
- WPR19LA218
- 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, cause areas. 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: ae3fbb34b60df4178c4e00c5bfd2a19c126ebeaab1c93069cad1f98b37652d15; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:44:57.539Z.