CEN20LA078 · Navion G
Navion G · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Fort Smith Regional Airport (FSM) to Fort Smith Regional Airport (FSM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA078
- 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
Navion G
- Aircraft type
- Navion NAVION
- 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
- N1011M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Smith Regional Airport (FSM), Fort Smith, ARTo Fort Smith Regional Airport (FSM), Fort Smith, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1962)
- 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 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after the pilot took off for a personal cross-country flight, about 300 ft above ground level, the engine lost partial power. The pilot lowered the airplane nose and the engine continued to operate, before losing total power. The pilot activated the electric fuel boost pump and engine power resumed for a few seconds. The pilot executed a forced landing to a grass area on airport property. During the forced landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed blue staining on and around the fuel selector valve area, consistent with a degraded valve. The valve failed leak checks during multiple vacuum tests to check external and internal leakage, which were called for in the manufacturer’s service bulletin 106 A and related airworthiness directive (AD) 2008-05-14. No fuel was found in any fuel lines or components from the firewall forward to the engine fuel components, and about 20 gallons of fuel was recovered from the airplane fuel tanks. It is likely the degraded fuel selector valve was leaking air, which resulted in fuel starvation to the engine. Aircraft records showed that the airplane and fuel selector valve were inspected and returned to service 2 days and about 18 flight hours before the accident. Based on the amount of fuel staining on and around the fuel selector valve and air leakage noted during the tests, the valve had likely become degraded before the last inspection. Given the valve’s degraded condition, it should have been tested and repaired or replaced during the last inspection in compliance with AD 2008-05-14.
Probable cause
The inadequate inspection of the fuel selector valve, which was degraded, allowed fuel to leak, and resulted in fuel starvation and a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA078
- Event ID
- 20200209X75546
- Case number
- CEN20LA078
- 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: f0636942ae285a4ab03770f67ebb03070751ff5eec74632ee58d99d80e94bfbd; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:04:11.997Z.