IAD98LA053 · Cessna 310Q
Cessna 310Q · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From North Central West Virginia Airport (CKB) to Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA053
- 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
Cessna 310Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N7795Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Central West Virginia Airport (CKB), Clarksburg, WVTo Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Approach
- First occurrenceThe 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
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Nashua, NH, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had been flown about 3 hours and 50 minutes since being refueled and was observed on approach to the airport. A witness stated the airplane appeared to be right of centerline and about 200 feet above the trees, when its descent rate increased and it descended wings level into the trees. No pre-impact damage was found to the engines and the propeller blades sustained minimal scratching. The main tanks and auxiliary tanks had ruptured and there was no evidence of fuel in the vicinity of these tanks. Approximately 11 1/2 gallons of fuel was drained from the right wing locker fuel tank and the wing locker fuel transfer switch was found in the OFF position. The left engine fuel selector valve was in the left auxiliary position and the right engine fuel selector valve was in the left main position; however, the valve was found in the right main position and the push pull rod was bent at the point of impact damage on the wing. Fuel controls for both engines displayed no fuel and the screens were clean.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management which led to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA053
- Event ID
- 20001211X10105
- Case number
- IAD98LA053
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: c524e041fb138087e1f2d37078529e7eb4001209fcd834c9363e36bc5315a759; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:33:10.845Z.