DEN03LA051 · Panzl PAN
Panzl PAN · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS) to Vernal Regional Airport (VEL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA051
- 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
Panzl PAN
- Aircraft type
- Panzl PAN
- 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
- N11ZL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS), Steamboat Spgs, COTo Vernal Regional Airport (VEL), Vernal, 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Lack of familiarity with aircraft
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
This was the pilot's first flight in the airplane. During the preflight, the previous owner "stuck" the fuel tanks and told the pilot that the main tank had an estimated 15 to 16 gallons of fuel, and the auxiliary tank (wing) was full. The pilot reported that he did not look into his fuel tanks. The previous owner said that he never flew with the fuel selector in the auxiliary position; by putting it in the both position, the auxiliary fuel flowed into the main tank and the engine continued to draw directly from the main tank. The pilot said that he flew on the main tank for approximately one hour and then turned the fuel selector to the auxiliary position (fuel flows directly from the auxiliary tank to the engine). Approximately 20 minutes later the engine quit. The pilot changed back to the main position on the fuel selector valve, but because his cruise altitude was approximately 1,500 feet AGL, he had little time to rectify the situation. During the subsequent forced landing, to an elevated highway, the pilot encounter high crosswinds and a downdraft resulting in the airplane impacting with high vertical forces. Post-accident examination revealed the auxiliary tank was empty and the main tank contained 3 to 4 gallons of fuel.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight preparation and his lack of familiarity with the airplane, which subsequently resulted in fuel starvation to the engine. Contributing factors were unfavorable wind conditions and the downdraft weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA051
- Event ID
- 20030325X00382
- Case number
- DEN03LA051
- 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: 7c70c5e850241983676c94e08c9caac03ded8ee5a126c0dfdfb4b877ebeaf10a; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:31:31.243Z.