WPR23LA272 · Mellinger B L III/Briebleb R GLASAIR III
Mellinger B L III/Briebleb R GLASAIR III · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA272
- 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
Mellinger B L III/Briebleb R GLASAIR III
- Aircraft type
- Mellinger B L Iii/briebleb GLASAIR
- 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
- N196G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1997)
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot detected the odor of fuel in the cockpit shortly after taking off. He turned the fuel boost pump off to alleviate the fuel smell. The fuel smell remained, and the engine surged and lost power. The pilot turned the fuel pump back on and switched fuel tanks to restart the engine. The engine did not restart so he performed a forced landing to a highway. The airplane hit a sign and the landing gear collapsed during the landing, resulting in substantial damage to both wings. During postaccident examination of the airplane a fuel leak was found in a fitting where the fuel line passes through the firewall to the engine. The connection at the fitting was tight, but abrasion damage was found to the fitting threads when the fuel line was disconnected. Maintenance was performed on fuel-related engine components about three months before the accident, but it was not determined if the fuel line to the damaged fitting was manipulated at that time. The accident is consistent with the engine losing total power due to fuel starvation resulting from a fuel leak that interrupted fuel flow to the engine. The leak resulted from the damaged threads on the fuel line fitting; the damage to the fittings likely occurred at an undetermined time during prior maintenance.
Probable cause
A fuel leak due to damaged threads on a fuel line fitting, which resulted in an interruption of fuel flow and a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA272
- Event ID
- 20230717192640
- Case number
- WPR23LA272
- 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: 7ca33ac1b16729625b2b564fc6799daa935e03f0cdd4bb4ab4524860818b2495; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:52:07.856Z.