CEN20LA322 · Quad City CHALLENGER II SPECIAL
Quad City CHALLENGER II SPECIAL · Accident: fuel related en route
From Jonesboro Airport (F88) to Jonesboro Airport (F88)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA322
- 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
Quad City CHALLENGER II SPECIAL
- Aircraft type
- Quad City CHALLENGER
- 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
- N990SS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jonesboro Airport (F88), Jonesboro, LATo Jonesboro Airport (F88), Jonesboro, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 14 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
- 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 related
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot reported that there was a “loud pop” and immediate loss of engine power shortly after takeoff. He was unable to return to the airstrip and executed a forced landing to a wooded area. Both wings and the fuselage sustained substantial damage.
The airplane was fueled before the flight; however, the fuel had been stored in the pilot’s hangar and was between 10 and 12 months old. A postrecovery engine examination did not identify any anomalies associated with the engine assembly. Fuel remaining in the carburetor bowls exhibited a dark yellow color consistent with stale automotive gasoline.
The pilot’s lack of training and experience with respect to airplane operations likely contributed to his decision to use old, automotive fuel in the airplane. It is likely that the engine lost power due to the old fuel in the fuel system.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to the use of improper fuel in the airplane by the non-certificated pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA322
- Event ID
- 20200803X35353
- Case number
- CEN20LA322
- 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: bbdaa439b29059781523ddb1e5eaaa25e4f73e6bdc329af687e7811201c82a4c; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:21:29.033Z.