Saber Cargo Airlines Cessna 402A accident
Cessna 402A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO) to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA204
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 402A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N402NA
- Operator
- Saber Cargo Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO), Denton, TXTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TX
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 11,000 feet, the left engine lost power when the pilot attempted to switch the fuel selector from the left main fuel tank to the left auxiliary fuel tank. The pilot stated that he was unable to restart the left engine after several attempts despite 'intensive trouble shooting' as per the checklist, and was unable to feather the left propeller during securing procedures. The pilot stated he used all the remaining fuel in the right tip tank, left tip tank, and the right auxiliary tank, and while descending to land, the right engine lost power due to fuel starvation. The pilot initiated a forced landing, and the airplane landed gear-up in high desert terrain. The pilot stated that upon landing he relocated the right engine's fuel selector to the off position in an effort to prevent a fire. After the accident, an FAA inspector found the fuel selectors for the left and right engines in the main and off positions, respectively. Usable fuel was found in both the left and right auxiliary fuel tanks. The pilot had a total of 15 flight hours in the accident airplane make and model, which included the accident flight.
Probable cause
the total loss of engine power on both engines during cruise due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's improper use of the fuel selectors. Contributing factors were the pilot's lack of familiarity with the aircraft, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA204
- Event ID
- 20001212X21460
- Case number
- FTW00LA204
- 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: a5c11c1488b060eae31a046eb10fee41f8adfe4f39c521c4f5afcc75138007b1; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:32:38.921Z.