WPR22LA203 · Czech Sport Aircraft A S SPORTCRUISER
Czech Sport Aircraft A S SPORTCRUISER · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA203
- 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
Czech Sport Aircraft A S SPORTCRUISER
- Aircraft type
- Czech Sport SPORTCRUISER
- 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
- N565L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2013)
- 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 contamination
- 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
- 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
Shortly after takeoff, having reached an altitude of between 100 to 200 ft above ground level, the airplane’s engine lost total power. The pilot then switched from the left to the right fuel tank and verified that the fuel pump was on. With limited time to troubleshoot and at an altitude too low to deploy the ballistic recovery parachute, he performed a forced landing directly ahead. The airplane struck a fence and sustained substantial damage. The airplane had been parked outside and not flown for about 6 weeks before the accident. During this time, it had been moved from its usual paved tie-down location to a temporary grass tie-down location and, several rain showers had passed through the area. Following the accident, 6 ounces of water were found in the left (takeoff) fuel tank, and the entire fuel system was found to be contaminated with water. Examination revealed that the water likely entered the left tank through the fuel filler cap, which was missing its O-ring seal. Although the pilot drained fuel from the left-wing sump before engine start, he may not have observed any water as the airplane was parked on an uneven grass surface, which may have resulted in the water settling away from the sump drain. Another possibility is that so much water was present that the pilot’s sump container was full of only water, which he misidentified as fuel rather than the globules of water typically observed during sumping operations.
Probable cause
A missing fuel filler cap O-ring, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to water contamination in the fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA203
- Event ID
- 20220608105220
- Case number
- WPR22LA203
- 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: 2bfd44e188d12f3507703ac5275a602c14a5646e4cc90d13e8d6afc18295dd93; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:18:20.383Z.