ERA22LA287 · Mantell Allan T LIGHTNING
Mantell Allan T LIGHTNING · Accident
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA287
- 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
Mantell Allan T LIGHTNING
- Aircraft type
- Mantell Allan LIGHTNING
- 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
- N51TM
- Operator
- Mantell Allan T
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
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, the experimental amateur-built airplane was seen by a witness near the accident site flying about 20 ft above a wheat field. The pilot performed an off-airport landing in the field, which resulted in the nose landing gear collapsing. The pilot sustained serious injuries, and his only recollections of the accident were that he thought the field was flat but encountered a bump during the landing and that he shut off the fuel selector after the accident. The pilot passed away more than 30 days after the accident.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed an adequate supply of fuel in both fuel tanks with no contaminants found. No discrepancies were noted during a visual inspection of the engine compartment, but during an attempt to start the engine following activation of the auxiliary fuel pump, a fuel hose from the gascolator to the engine-driven fuel pump separated from the outlet fitting of the gascolator due to inadequate clamping force. The hose was re-installed onto the fitting, and the engine was started and found to operate normally at low power; a full-power engine run was not performed due to impact-damaged propeller blades. While the airplane designer reported that a loose fuel hose at the outlet of the gascolator could introduce air into the fuel supply, it could not be determined whether this condition existed prior to, or was a result of the impact, and the reason the pilot performed an off-airport landing shortly after takeoff could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot’s performance of an off-airport landing shortly after takeoff for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA287
- Event ID
- 20220627105367
- Case number
- ERA22LA287
- 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: 30d2846d2ba1021703ecaeee89c870731633735ad166e5491f4ee24bc1b09c42; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:23:31.572Z.