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Atlas / NTSB / LAX87LA138

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event LAX87LA138

1987-03-08 SANTA YNEZ, California, United States Airport · IZA None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

JUST AFTER TAKEOFF, THE PLT REPORTED AN ENGINE FAILURE. UNABLE TO RETURN TO THE AIRPORT THE PLT LANDED IN AN OPEN FIELD AND COLLIDED WITH THE TERRAIN. DURING THE ENGINE EXAMINATION THE FUEL DIVERTER VALVE WAS REMOVED. LOW AIR PRESSURE WAS APPLIED TO ALL THREE FITTINGS, NO AIR FLOW THRU THE VALVE COULD BE OBTAINED. THE VALVE WAS DISASSEMBLED WHICH REVEALED THAT A PIECE OF THE PLUNGER CORE, A RUBBER TYPE COMPOUND, HAD BROKEN AWAY FROM THE PLUNGER AND WAS LODGED IN THE FUEL OUTLET FITTING BLOCKING THE FLOW OF FUEL. NO OTHER MECHANICAL FAILURES OR MALFUNCTIONS WERE NOTED. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1987_LAX87LA138.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 (engine failure). 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 ↗