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Atlas / NTSB / FTW88DRG04

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event FTW88DRG04

1987-12-19 HARLINGEN, Texas, United States Airport · HRL Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

THE SET OF FLOATS WHICH ALLOWS A HIGH FUEL FLOW IN THIS CARBURETOR FOR HIGH POWER SETTINGS USED FOR TAKEOFF, CLIMB, ETC., HAD CRACKED AND SWOLLEN TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT THEY WERE RUBBING AGAINST THE FLOAT CHAMBER WALLS AND FLOAT CHAMBER SHROUD TUBES. THIS INTERFERENCE PREVENTED ADEQUATE FUEL FLOW FOR HIGH POWER OPERATION OF THE ENGINE DURING THE TAKEOFF CLIMB WHICH TERMINATED IN THE ACCIDENT. THERE WERE NO ENTRIES IN THE MAINTENANCE LOGS WHICH INDICATED ANY MAINTENANCE OR INTERNAL EXAMINATION OF THE CARBURETOR SINCE THE AIRCRAFT WAS NEW (1959). Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1987_FTW88DRG04.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 (maintenance). 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 ↗