WPR20LA259 · Rutan VARI EZE
Rutan VARI EZE · Accident: fuel related en route
From California City Municipal Airport (L71) to California City Municipal Airport (L71)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA259
- 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
Rutan VARI EZE
- Aircraft type
- Rutan VARI EZE
- 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
- N2ZE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From California City Municipal Airport (L71), California City, CATo California City Municipal Airport (L71), California City, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1984)
- 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
- Destroyed Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed with 16 gallons of fuel (about 3 hours of flight time) on board for the local flight. About one hour after the departure, the engine experienced a loss of engine power. He switched the fuel selector from the wing tank position to the center tank position, and the engine regained power for 30 seconds before it lost power again. The pilot manipulated the fuel selector two more times only to experience an additional 20 seconds of regained engine power. The pilot then executed an emergency landing during which the fuselage was substantially damaged. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the left-wing fuel cap was not secured to the fuel tank and both wing fuel tanks were empty. The pilot’s failure to secure the left wing fuel cap likely created a leak in the fuel system which would have exhausted the fuel supply sooner than the pilot planned for and resulted in a loss of power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to secure the fuel cap, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA259
- Event ID
- 20200809X42236
- Case number
- WPR20LA259
- 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: 0671718d8529e273e4321273eaebd23f7e0f33ca11d8ae47e7ea9169128f5db4; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:26:17.535Z.