ERA25LA041 · Anderson Kitfox 4
Anderson Kitfox 4 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA041
- 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
Anderson Kitfox 4
- Aircraft type
- Anderson KITFOX 4
- 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
- N620GA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1994)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff on an instructional flight, at an altitude of about 300 ft and midfield, the airplane’s engine lost partial power. The flight instructor was unable to restore engine power, initiated a right turn, and conducted a forced landing to an open grassy area near the runway. During the landing the airplane’s right wing and fuselage sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane’s two-stroke engine revealed a fuel leak at the aft carburetor’s fuel supply line when the electric fuel pump was activated. The fuel line exhibited a split extending from the end of the line to beneath the clamp area. The observed split in the fuel line would have reduced fuel supply and pressure to the rear carburetor and was consistent with the reported partial loss of engine power. Maintenance records indicated that the airplane had accrued 10 flight hours since its most recent condition inspection, about 3 months before the accident. The records also showed that the airplane’s fuel lines had been replaced nearly 2 years and less than 40 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to a split fuel line that resulted in a fuel leak and reduced fuel supply to the aft carburetor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA041
- Event ID
- 20241107195453
- Case number
- ERA25LA041
- 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: 7dc68777f6be223bd463d88a58b4c6911cefb57959a9c4f838d56dc83196debd; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:27:11.954Z.