ERA24LA040 · Bell Andy SKYRAIDER II
Bell Andy SKYRAIDER II · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA040
- 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
- 0
- 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
Bell Andy SKYRAIDER II
- Aircraft type
- Bell Andy SKYRAIDER
- 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
- N90AB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a short local flight in the experimental amateur-built airplane, the pilot landed, taxied back, and took off to practice landings. Shortly after takeoff, during the initial climb as he crossed the end of the runway at 300 ft above ground level, the engine suddenly lost power for several seconds, regained partial power, then stopped producing power again. The power continued to fluctuate but remained about 800 rpm below full power. The pilot was unable to maintain altitude and continued to fly the runway heading to land in a field that was bordered by trees. The airplane continued to descend, and the pilot was unable to clear the treetops. The airplane impacted the trees, then impacted the terrain in a nose-down attitude, resulting in substantial damage to the wings. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed the carburetor was intact and there was no fuel discovered in the lines between the engine-driven fuel pump and the carburetor. Upon further examination, the engine-driven fuel pump contained a substantial amount of corrosion. Although the pilot stated he had turned on the auxiliary fuel pump, no fuel was found in the fuel lines leading into the carburetor. It is likely that the corrosion in the engine-driven fuel pump led to a sporadic ability to provide adequate fuel to the engine, resulting in a partial loss of power from fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The failure of the fuel pump to adequately supply fuel to the engine due to significant corrosion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA040
- Event ID
- 20231116193395
- Case number
- ERA24LA040
- 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: 594fe996cb28b31394d7566b6c242e5f80fb7b50f17264f072dd87f88b8e8970; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:17:58.322Z.