ERA21LA005 · Fokker DR1
Forgotten Heroes Foundation Fokker DR1 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Hummel Field (W75) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA005
- 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
- 0
- 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
Fokker DR1
- Aircraft type
- Fokker DR1
- 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
- N512FH
- Operator
- Forgotten Heroes Foundation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hummel Field (W75), Saluda, VATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2019)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
The pilot departed in the experimental airplane for a local flight. While in cruise flight about 25 minutes after departure, the engine lost all power. When his attempts to restore power were unsuccessful, he performed a forced landing to a field, during which the airplane impacted power lines, landed in the field, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the top wing and forward fuselage. The day after the accident, the pilot found the copper ram-air fuel vent tube on the taxiway between the hangar and the runway. The tube had electrical tape wrapped around the mounting end, presumably installed to increase its diameter to fit the larger diameter rubber tubing of the fuel tank vent line where it was previously attached and held in place by a hose clamp. The pilot surmised that the electrical tape had deteriorated due to contact with fuel, allowing the tube to separate from the rubber vent line. He further surmised that the fuel tank was insufficiently vented during the flight due to missing ram air tube, and the negative pressure in the fuel tank after 25 minutes of flight resulted in fuel starvation to the engine. The engine was successfully started and run after the accident during the examination performed by the pilot and his mechanic.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as the result of the improper installation of the ram air fuel vent tube, which resulted in the tube separating from the airplane during taxi and subsequent negative pressure inside the fuel tank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA005
- Event ID
- 20201005102085
- Case number
- ERA21LA005
- 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: c7fdd36cb4e9678d8ffcb6cd1cb82d11b1efbf2b04622b196c0c971f33dd4030; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:10:46.876Z.