ERA25LA030 · Zenith Zodiac 601 HDS
Zenith Zodiac 601 HDS · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA030
- 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
Zenith Zodiac 601 HDS
- Aircraft type
- Zenith Zodiac 601
- 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
- N511JG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 22 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
- 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
Shortly after takeoff, as the airplane was climbing through 300 ft above ground level, the engine misfired, then suddenly stopped producing power. Unable to troubleshoot due to the low altitude, the pilot lowered the nose and attempted a forced landing on the remaining runway. The airplane landed hard, collapsing the landing gear and damaging the wings and airframe. Postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any engine anomalies; however, an examination of the fuel system revealed the fuel gascolator was installed partially outside of the engine compartment, exposing it to the air slipstream. The gascolator exhibited features consistent with a fuel leak. The gascolator bowl was not completely secure to the upper portion of the gascolator and it leaked fuel when touched by hand. The most recent engine maintenance was completed about 10 days before the accident and, although the fuel gascolator gasket was not mentioned in the logbook entry, a fuel system inspection was documented. The condition of the gasket would have warranted replacement. The gascolator bowl gasket was stiff and cracked, which likely allowed fuel to leak out during the flight, starving the engine of fuel. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted in a loss of engine power and hard landing.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of a deteriorated gascolator gasket. Contributing was the failure of the mechanic to replace the gasket during the most recent condition inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA030
- Event ID
- 20241029195410
- Case number
- ERA25LA030
- 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: e14ee09a84679fafb0d84cede07f58fa43a457ed27d291416746541bd9884f89; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:25:58.897Z.