CEN09LA345 · Curtiss Moses Aerolite 103
Curtiss Moses Aerolite 103 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during an emergency descent
From E58 · Los Lunas, NM to Los Lunas, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA345
- 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
Curtiss Moses Aerolite 103
- Aircraft type
- Curtiss Moses AEROLITE
- Category
- Ultralight
- 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
- N43598
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From E58 · Los Lunas, NMTo Los Lunas, NM
- 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
- Emergency descent
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The sport pilot was flying his airplane near the home of one of his relatives. The engine "stalled" as he passed over the residence and he decided to land on a gravel road, but changed the intended landing area to an open field. While approaching the field for a landing, the airplane collided with a hidden obstruction. An examination of the airplane and engine was conducted by an inspector from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The fuel selector was found selected to an empty fuel tank, while the other fuel tank contained approximately 2.5 gallons of fuel. Under supervision by the FAA, the engine was started and ran normally under various power settings. Examination of the airplane and engine did not disclose any evidence of a mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's fuel mismanagement.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA345
- Event ID
- 20090609X52506
- Case number
- CEN09LA345
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: c3ce830454903963444f98a879777699d8ca3c5a8074ee13c91a1d5499a9050e; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:21:47.108Z.