WPR21LA072 · Navion Navion A
Navion Navion A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA072
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Navion Navion A
- Aircraft type
- Navion A
- 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
- N4106K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern crosswind
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had an annual inspection and new wingtip fuel tanks installed about 6 months before the accident. The accident flight was the first flight since the maintenance. The pilot completed a normal runup inspection and the engine developed full power during takeoff. However, at an altitude of approximately 500 ft above ground level (agl), as the pilot turned onto the crosswind leg of the traffic pattern, the engine began to surge and lose power. As the pilot reduced the power for landing on the downwind leg, the engine lost total power. When the pilot realized the airplane would not make it to the runway, he prepared for a landing on the grass area parallel to the runway. The airplane touched down and the left wing impacted concrete blocks. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed a leaking gascolator fuel inlet line caused by a loose hose clamp connection on the fuel line from the fuel selector to the gascolator. The loose connection allowed a large amount of air to be introduced into the fuel line going to the engine and fuel pumps, which caused the engine to surge and eventually lose power. The examination also revealed several maintenance discrepancies. The leaking fuel inlet line was made of rubber instead of aluminum tubing, and the fuel selector's connection was improper. Additionally, the wingtip fuel tank installation revealed several inconsistencies with the installation, such as loose clamps and improper hardware installed. These discrepancies were an indication of improper recent maintenance.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the gascolator fuel inlet line and hose clamp connection, which resulted in the total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA072
- Event ID
- 20201222102448
- Case number
- WPR21LA072
- 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: 871fa9c7c001d66603d13fbb3b5cabb025fb56c6751228e893b17aefe76cac64; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:30:49.896Z.