DEN01FA162 · Cessna 337B
Aero West Jet Center Cessna 337B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Mesquite Airport (67L) to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01FA162
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 337B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N337PM
- Operator
- Aero West Jet Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesquite Airport (67L), Mesquite, NVTo St George Regional Airport (SGU), St. George, UT
- 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 pattern downwind
- 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; Wire, transmission
- 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 supply, not possible
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had recently been repainted and was being ferried to another airport for complete refurbishing. The interior, including avionics and most of the instruments, had been removed. Prior to departure, the ATP-rated pilot drained both inboard wing tanks and drained no fuel. He requested that 15 gallons of fuel be added to each side. The fuel was put in the inboard (auxiliary) fuel tanks, which have a fuel capacity of 15 gallons each. No fuel was added to the outboard (main) fuel tanks, which have a fuel capacity of 40 gallons each. Departure and the 20 minute en route flight were without reported incident. Witnesses said the pilot had to abandon his initial landing approach to runway 34 due to conflicting traffic. The pilot then turned downwind for runway 6, but the airplane descended below airport elevation (the airport is situated on top of a mesa). Various witness accounts indicated one or both engines lost power. The airplane struck powerlines and impacted a downtown street. Fuel selector valve handles were not found in the wreckage. Upon opening both wings, the left and right fuel selector valves were found slightly misaligned from being centered on the left and right main tanks, respectively. The fuel tanks were then drained. Each auxiliary (inboard) tank contained 15 gallons of fuel. Approximately 3 ounces of fuel were drained from the left main (outboard) tank. No fuel drained from the right main tank.
Probable cause
total loss of engine power on both engines due to fuel starvation and the pilot's inability to access the available fuel supply. Contributing factors were the pilot's inadequate supervision of the refueling operation, and his intentional operation of the airplane with known deficiencies in equipment (no fuel selector valve handles or placards installed).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01FA162
- Event ID
- 20011004X02041
- Case number
- DEN01FA162
- 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: 5e1665cc2a2a4383964effb3668b40b2c3059b1f120476c24d3a519486e09c27; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:20:45.292Z.