ERA21LA018 · Zenith STOL CH801
Gospel Ministries International Zenith STOL CH801 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Collegedale Municipal Airport (FGU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA018
- 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
Zenith STOL CH801
- Aircraft type
- Zenith STOL CH801
- 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
- N801TP
- Operator
- Gospel Ministries International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Collegedale Municipal Airport (FGU), Collegedale, TNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2004)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the accident flight was his first flight in the experimental amateur-built airplane, and it was the first flight after a condition inspection. After an uneventful takeoff, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power during the initial climb about 800 ft above ground level. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and subsequently performed a forced landing to a grassy clearing about 1 mile from the departure runway. During the rollout, the airplane impacted thick vegetation and trees, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left fuel tank was empty, and the right fuel tank contained about 12 gallons. Additionally, the fuel selector placards for LEFT and RIGHT were mislabeled backwards. The pilot reported that prior to takeoff, there was about 15 gallons of fuel in the right fuel tank, and “only a couple of gallons” in the left fuel tank. As a result, he placed the fuel selector toward the sticker-type placard that stated RIGHT, although the fuel selector was pointed toward the left wing. According to the pilot, the most recent condition inspection did not involve any action that would have involved the fuel selector placards. Review of past maintenance records found several instances of fuel system maintenance; however, no entry described an action about placards at the fuel selector. Therefore, the investigation was unable to identify when the fuel tanks became incorrectly placarded.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, as a result of an incorrectly placarded fuel selector.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA018
- Event ID
- 20201012102131
- Case number
- ERA21LA018
- 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: 87b9063c4315c65df62615c56419a5e245afdb25b16ab1b1c3a3f5f8a1d8b0c5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:13:50.393Z.