WPR25LA069 · Sling Aircraft (PTY) Ltd SLING LSA
Sling Flying Club Sling Aircraft (PTY) Ltd SLING LSA · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From YOA · Torrence, CA to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA069
- 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
Sling Aircraft (PTY) Ltd SLING LSA
- Aircraft type
- Sling Aircraft (pty) SLING
- 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
- N519CV
- Operator
- Sling Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From YOA · Torrence, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2022)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while about 3,000 ft mean sea level (msl), he slipped the airplane to descend 1,100 ft to get to the traffic pattern altitude. After leveling off, he saw the fuel pressure drop. He checked to make sure that both fuel pumps were on. Shortly after, the airplane lost all fuel pressure and engine RPM. After troubleshooting, he was unable to restore engine power, and initiated a forced landing to a golf course, where the airplane impacted trees and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, and wings. The Pilot’s Operating Handbook for the airplane, stated in part “the fuel lift pipe in the fuel tank is situated adjacent to the lower inside wall of the tank. The aircraft should at no time be subjected to a sustained side slip towards a near empty fuel tank (i.e. -right wing down) as, despite the baffling, this may have the consequence that the fuel runs towards the outer edge of the tank exposing the fuel pipe to suck air, thereby starving the engine of fuel leading to engine failure. This poses a particular threat when at low altitude, typically prior to landing.” The pilot did not initially report that there was no mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation; however, upon reviewing the recorded flight data with his chief flight instructor, that included the bank angle indicator, slip/skid indicator, and fuel pressure, the pilot concluded that the loss of power was likely from the left fuel lift pipe becoming exposed, starving the engine of fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to conduct a prolonged slip against warnings specified in the Pilot’s Operating Handbook which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA069
- Event ID
- 20241223199463
- Case number
- WPR25LA069
- 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: 73da6947f398479cc6d6d5dbd52c3ef91536463f7a3b216c3d47e3c6dbe66503; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:33:51.552Z.