FTW89FA074 · Cessna 421
Cessna 421 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW89FA074
- 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
- 1 · 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 421
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N4595L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO), Brownsville, TXTo not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NEWLY HIRED CORPORATE PILOT STARVED THE RIGHT ENGINE OF FUEL ON THE MULTI-ENGINE AIRPLANE WHILE ON A LOCAL AREA SELF CHECKOUT IN THE AIRPLANE. HE DID NOT FEATHER THE RIGHT PROPELLER. AT THE TIME OF THE NON-MECHANICAL LOSS OF POWER, THE AIRPLANE WAS IN LOW LEVEL (600 FEET AGL) CRUISE. THE PILOT LOWERED THE FLAPS TO 45 DEGREES AND EXTENDED THE LANDING GEAR TO THE DOWN AND LOCKED POSITION. THE AIRPLANE'S AIRSPEED DECREASED BELOW VMC AND THE AIRPLANE STALLED, WENT OUT OF CONTROL, AND IMPACTED OPEN RANCH LAND NOSE LOW, IN A VERTICAL DESCENT ANGLE. A POST-IMPACT FIRE OCCURRED. THE PILOT LACKED KNOWLEDGE OF THE AIRPLANE SYSTEMS AND LACKED EXPERIENCE IN THE CESSNA 421.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER EMERGENCY PROCEDURE AFTER LOSSING POWER IN THE RIGHT ENGINE, AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM CONTROL SPEED (VMC), WHICH RESULTED IN A LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: FUEL STARVATION OF THE RIGHT ENGINE, THE PILOT'S LACK OF EXPERIENCE IN THIS TYPE OF AIRCRAFT, AND HIS LACK OF UNDERSTANDING OF THE FUEL SYSTEM.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW89FA074
- Event ID
- 20001213X27890
- Case number
- FTW89FA074
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1989-03-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c429226df8ea1652468fb90f31b16cf3e81cdd64a1eb137453cae70eb282c46e; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:21:47.741Z.