ERA21LA127 · Vans RV7
Vans RV7 · Accident: fuel related en route
From Tampa Executive Airport (KVDF) to Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (KZPH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA127
- 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
Vans RV7
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV7
- 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
- N611E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tampa Executive Airport (KVDF), Tampa, FLTo Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (KZPH), Zephyr Hills, FL
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2021)
- 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 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
During the previous flight, the experimental, amateur-built airplane lost total engine power, and the pilot, who was the builder of the airplane, completed a successful forced landing with no damage to the airplane. He found that the fuel pressure adapter “t”-fitting, used to attach the fuel pressure line, had disconnected from the fuel pump elbow fitting. The automotive adapter fitting was adopted during the airplane’s construction for fitment in a confined space and did not allow for measured torque application. The pilot reattached the fitting with a modified and shortened 5/8” spanner wrench for the 11/16” b-nut. The pilot departed the forced landing site and landed successfully at his destination. The accident flight was the airplane’s next flight. Minutes after takeoff, the airplane once again experienced a loss of fuel pressure and a total loss of engine power. During the subsequent forced landing, the pilot sustained minor injuries and the airplane was substantially damaged. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that the same fuel pump elbow fitting was disconnected from the adapter fitting. Examination of the adapter revealed that its material was soft relative to materials used in Air Force-Navy (AN) standard fittings. As a result, the shoulder on the adapter body could have been deformed under the pressure of the retaining ring even when applying minimum torque values suggested for AN standard fittings made of aluminum alloys specified in military specification. This deformation may have inhibited the proper frictional resistance in the threads to prevent the nut from backing off in service. Additionally, the body of the adapter fitting tended to rotate when applying torque to the nut. If the body was not properly secured while torque was applied to the nut during field repairs, the twisting of the adapter fitting body could have produced stresses in the attached hoses in the assembly that may have worked to rotate the adapter fitting and nut in the loosening direction during operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to apply adequate torque on the fuel pressure line aluminum adaptor fitting, which resulted in the loosening of the adapter, a loss of fuel flow, and a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s choice of a soft aluminum automotive fitting, and the design, which required hand-tightening with a shortened, modified wrench that prevented a measured torque application.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA127
- Event ID
- 20210209102615
- Case number
- ERA21LA127
- 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: f931433c66cd37763913d66807464256cfe2a5c99576ca49de21c56af7887b25; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:37:28.481Z.