WPR20LA145 · Czech Sport AIrcraft Sport Cruiser
Platinum Aviation Czech Sport AIrcraft Sport Cruiser · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Logan-Cache Airport (LGU) to U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA145
- 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
Czech Sport AIrcraft Sport Cruiser
- Aircraft type
- Czech Sport SPORT CRUISER
- 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
- N802PS
- Operator
- Platinum AViation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), Logan, UTTo U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was making his second solo cross-country flight. He completed the first leg and shut down the engine. When he restarted the engine to begin the next leg of the flight, it momentarily lost power during the magneto check, and he shut it down. After consulting his flight instructor by cell phone, he again started the engine, but the electric fuel pump sounded much louder than usual, so he shut the engine down. On the third engine start, the electric fuel pump remained louder than normal, and he noticed that the fuel pressure was fluctuating. The fuel pressure recovered to 3.5 pounds per square inch (psi), and he completed a normal engine run-up.
Shortly thereafter, the pilot departed. As the airplane reached about 50 to 100 ft above ground level, the engine surged, and he noticed that the fuel pressure had decreased to 1.0 psi. He retarded the throttle to land. The airplane touched down hard and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
After the accident, the engine was started and run for several minutes multiple times with no anomalies noted. Testing of the electric fuel pump revealed that it made a loud noise when air passed through it; therefore, the noise heard by the pilot during the engine starts was likely due to air in the fuel system. The accident airplane did not have a fuel bypass around the electric fuel pump, which the engine manufacture’s installation instructions warn is a necessary safeguard.
Examination of onboard engine monitoring data revealed that during the climb, the fuel pressure suddenly decreased to 1.1 psi, and the fuel flow simultaneously reached 9.8 gallons per hour. The fuel flow continued to oscillate indicating that the fuel flow to the engine was experiencing intermittent interruptions consistent with fuel vaporizing in the fuel lines (vapor lock).
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during takeoff due to vapor lock.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA145
- Event ID
- 20200513X41558
- Case number
- WPR20LA145
- 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, coordinates, 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: 898f9f1b78fdde2f4489f111e78c885c5eb4361547d086c9b84a34cae0fe8d84; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:35:45.639Z.