NYC00LA219 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD) to Post Mills Airport (2B9)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA219
- 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 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N73044
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD), Rockland, METo Post Mills Airport (2B9)
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 management, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Post Mills, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed, flew a cross-country flight, and entered the traffic pattern while operating on the left fuel tank. On base leg, he switched to the right tank. After turning final, he initiated a go-around due to conflicting traffic. The engine sputtered and lost power on the go-around. There was insufficient altitude to reach a suitable landing area, and the airplane settled into the trees in a nose down attitude. The fuel selector was turned off as the airplane began hitting the trees. Examination revealed the left fuel tank was empty, and when the cap on the right fuel tank was loosened, fuel gushed out around the edges of the cap. When the fuel selector was positioned to the right tank, fuel flowed from the right tank to the sump, which was broken, and the odor of fuel was detected in the air. The airplane had operated for 1 hour, 43 minutes on a fuel tank with a listed capacity of 12.5 gallons.
Probable cause
was the pilot's improper fuel management which resulted in power loss due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA219
- Event ID
- 20001212X21833
- Case number
- NYC00LA219
- 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: 2f0fa6f1deee2de672f35f15086ec535ea4a813feb4ab636b96110fa5e5e2282; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:08:05.516Z.