WPR22LA046 · Vans RV10
Vans RV10 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From an unrecorded airport to Skypark Airport (BTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA046
- 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
Vans RV10
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV10
- 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
- N54CT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Skypark Airport (BTF), Bountiful, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2020)
- 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 · climb to 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after takeoff, on the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern, he reduced power and decreased his rate of climb due to rising engine operating temperatures. Shortly after, the engine experienced a complete loss of power. Despite attempts to troubleshoot, the pilot was unable to restore engine power and conducted a 360° turn to lose altitude prior to landing. However, after turning onto final approach for the runway, he realized he did not have enough altitude to make it to the runway and initiated a forced landing to an open field. The airplane landed hard and impacted terrain before it came to rest in a nose-low attitude, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and left wing.
Postaccident examination of the recovered airframe and engine revealed that the fuel line from the fuel servo outlet port to the fuel flow transducer inlet port was loose at the fuel servo fitting. The loose fuel line would not allow for enough fuel pressure to reach the fuel flow divider and fuel injection nozzles, thus resulting in a loss of engine power. Recorded engine data revealed that fuel flow had decreased, while fuel pressure had remained steady, which would be consistent with a loose fuel line. The airplane’s last condition inspection was performed about 19 flight hours before the accident.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to a loose fuel line at the fuel servo outlet port.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA046
- Event ID
- 20211123104301
- Case number
- WPR22LA046
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 2d58dd1bd33e85b03cf738c00f1a90c02e72d29178bc25b650cef2a285f4119a; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:46:55.053Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. BTF is Skypark Airport at Bountiful, Utah; the city name is misspelled 'Bountifuil' in the record.