FTW03LA077 · Carlisle Comp Air 6
Carlisle Comp Air 6 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Easterwood Field (CLL) to Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA077
- 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
- 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
Carlisle Comp Air 6
- Aircraft type
- Carlisle COMP AIR 6
- 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
- N628
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easterwood Field (CLL), College Station, TXTo Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO), Denton, 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 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)
- 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
- Fuel system › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure, the airplane's fuel tanks were filled with 53 gallons of 100LL aviation fuel. In cruise flight at 3,000 feet mean sea level (msl), the engine lost total power. At the time the engine lost power, the pilot stated that the right main fuel tank selector switch was ON. The pilot then switched ON the fuel selector to the left main tank, turned ON the fuel boost pump, and attempted to restart the engine; however, the restart was unsuccessful. The pilot then executed a forced landing to a field. During the forced landing, the engine momentarily regained power, and the pilot overshot his intended landing area in the field. Subsequently, the airplane contacted soft terrain, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. The fuel system was comprised of left and right main fuel tank and a header tank. The left and right main fuel tanks drained into the header tank, and the header tank was connected to the engine. The pilot had the option to open and/or close the fuel valves for the left main, right main, and header fuel tanks.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel selector position which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. A contributing factor was the soft terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA077
- Event ID
- 20030109X00041
- Case number
- FTW03LA077
- 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, coordinates. 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: 404059296187f580cbb48359d7431e77fdf31698214edc3d11a76f39c1d951b6; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:42:00.611Z.