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Atlas / NTSB / DEN90LA097

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event DEN90LA097

1990-04-21 GRAND FORKS, North Dakota, United States Airport · GFK Minor 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

AN OVER TEMPERATURE OF THE INLET FUEL LINE RESULTING IN FUEL STARVATION (VAPOR LOCK) IN THE FUEL INJECTION SYSTEM. A FACTOR IN THE ACCIDENT WAS THE LACK OF A SUITABLE LANDING AREA.

Factual narrative

N64UV SUSTAINED SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGE DURING AN EMERGENCY LANDING, IN A FIELD NEAR THE GRAND FORKS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, NORTH DAKOTA. DURING FINAL APPROACH TO LANDING, THE AIRCRAFT ENGINE SUDDENLY STOPPED. THE INSTRUCTOR TOOK OVER THE CONTROLS. HE SAID THE ENGINE DID NOT RESTART AND HE WAS FORCED TO LAND ON AN UNSUITABLE LANDING SURFACE. DURING THE LANDING ROLL THE AIRCRAFT NOSED OVER. INSPECTION OF THE ENGINE INDICATED THAT THE POER LOSS WAS DUE TO VAPOR LOCK IN THE INLET FUEL LINE TO THE ELECTRIC BOOST PUMP. SUBSEQUENT ENGINE TEST RUN WAS SUCCESSFUL. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_DEN90LA097.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel starvation). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗