CEN25LA096 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5A
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5A · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Rusk County Airport (KRFI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA096
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N26071
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Rusk County Airport (KRFI), Henderson, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1977)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 17, 2025, about 2215 central standard time, a Grumman AA-5A airplane, N26071, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Gladewater, Texas. The pilot sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, the airplane engine lost partial power about 450 to 500 ft above ground level during the initial takeoff climb. The pilot immediately made a left turn back towards the airport and conducted a slow but controlled descent with the remining engine power. He chose to continue the turn and performed a forced landing to the grass next to the runway which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and empennage. The pilot stated that he was ferrying the airplane to the Rusk County Airport (RFI) in Henderson, Texas, to have engine maintenance performed. The pilot further stated that the carburetor had been replaced about two weeks prior, and the airplane was experiencing a slight engine stumbling at full power and full mixture on subsequent flights. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the carburetor inlet rubber duct between the airbox and carburetor was puckered inward at both the airbox outlet and carburetor inlet. The puckering of the duct was observed to be partially blocking the carburetor venturi.
Figure 1. View through the carburetor.
The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA096
- Event ID
- 20250218199710
- Case number
- CEN25LA096
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-02-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6e2c482203dbfba94d7e2f989b8afee6a27cfb2e6af053a8ad0844fad604bb70; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:40:04.717Z.