SEA07LA129 · SIAI-Marchetti FN-333
SIAI-Marchetti FN-333 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA129
- 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
SIAI-Marchetti FN-333
- Aircraft type
- Siai Marchetti FN-333
- 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
- N95DR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NVTo Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NV
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, not selected
- 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
As the airplane neared its destination at the end of a cross country flight lasting about 2 hours, the pilot transmitted on the destination airport Unicom frequency that he had a fuel problem, and would be making a straight-in landing. There were no further transmissions recorded. Witnesses near the accident site, about 3 miles southeast of the airport, reported seeing the airplane descending with the engine not producing power. The witnesses saw the airplane strike the roof of a recreational vehicle garage, impact the ground in a nose down attitude, nose over, and come to rest inverted. During examination of the airplane, no fuel was found in the left fuel tank; however, the right fuel tank contained fuel. The fuel selector was found positioned to the left tank. The engine was partially disassembled and inspected. The inspection did not reveal any abnormalities that would have prevented normal operation and production of power. Due to the lack of any preaccident mechanical problems with the airplane, and the fuel selector found positioned on an empty tank, it is probable that the pilot failed to select the fuel tank with fuel, and the engine lost power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of fuel starvation due to the pilot's improper positioning of the fuel selector and failure to select a tank containing fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA129
- Event ID
- 20070608X00697
- Case number
- SEA07LA129
- 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: 7e86b5c73cd912e53b581daeae6e78ccef3daa18e886d48d9c082a8002b93e2e; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:37:00.128Z.