WPR22LA211 · Rans S21
Rans S21 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA211
- 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
- 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
Rans S21
- Aircraft type
- Rans S21
- 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
- N46JH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 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
- 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 › 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 pilot was conducting a test flight following recent maintenance when, shortly after departing, the engine began to lose power. He performed a forced landing on airport property, during which the airplane landed hard and sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the fuel filter b-nut fitting was not properly torqued, which likely introduced air into the fuel system. Additionally, there was no restricted bypass line between the inlet (pressure side of the fuel pump module) and the return line and no vent line from the header tank, both of which would have allowed the venting of air from the fuel system. Based on this evidence, it is likely that the loose fuel filter b-nut allowed the air into the fuel system that could not be properly vented due to the lack of a restricted bypass line and vent line, which ultimately resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The owner’s (pilot) failure to properly torque a fuel filter b-nut fitting, which likely introduced air into the fuel system and resulted in a loss of engine power. Contributing to the loss of power was a missing restricted bypass line and a header tank vent line, which would have allowed the venting of air from the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA211
- Event ID
- 20220613105241
- Case number
- WPR22LA211
- 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: 40fda10b8a4735936110aa6a662a77818e2083da191eb14ac28a467e5edb9a45; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:19:07.098Z.