CEN26LA074 · Pitts S1S
Pitts S1S · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA074
- 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
Pitts S1S
- Aircraft type
- Pitts S1
- 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
- N401MS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2015)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 (total)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Pole
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had completed three touch-and-go landings followed by a low approach. As he began a climb after the low approach, the engine lost power about 400 feet above ground level (agl). The pilot was able to momentarily restore partial power by manually actuating the emergency fuel pump; however, the engine lost power again. He was unable to restore engine power and executed a forced landing on an airport perimeter road. The airplane subsequently struck a power pole which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe.
A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies. No fuel was present in the fuel manifold when the fuel manifold was disassembled. Further examination revealed that the mixture control cable was not secured at the fuel injection servo. Movement of the cockpit mixture control resulted in corresponding flexing of the mixture cable outer sheath at the engine fuel injection servo. With the cockpit mixture control in the full rich position, the engine fuel injector mixture lever position corresponded to about mid-range. A full rich mixture setting at the fuel injector could not be achieved. Maintenance logbooks indicated that several fuel lines were replaced and a fuel flow transducer was installed about 3.6 hours before the accident.
It is likely that the failure of the mixture cable sheath to be properly secured at the fuel injection servo allowed the cable to flex, resulting in an uncommanded change in the fuel servo mixture during the flight, resulting in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation resulting from an uncommanded change to the fuel servo mixture position due to the improperly installed mixture cable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA074
- Event ID
- 20260106202247
- Case number
- CEN26LA074
- 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: 38dd5c93fafe90c81d16772e2302cfe212cba65adb09078a4bf802f56f6f8d20; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:38:44.067Z.