ERA09LA457 · Tidd Wesley Mini-Max
Tidd Wesley Mini-Max · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Houlton International Airport (HUL) to Houlton International Airport (HUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA457
- 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
Tidd Wesley Mini-Max
- Aircraft type
- Tidd Wesley MINI-MAX
- 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
- N569WT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houlton International Airport (HUL), Houlton, METo Houlton International Airport (HUL), Houlton, ME
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the experimental amateur-built airplane stated that while in flight the engine lost power. After switching fuel tanks, the pilot attempted a restart, and the engine performed about 25 to 30 revolutions; however, the engine would not restart. While approaching the field selected for a forced landing, he realized the grass was about 5 feet tall. Upon landing, grass wrapped around his "wheel bar" and the airplane nosed over. The pilot reported to law enforcement personnel on scene that he felt he ran out of gas. Inspection of the fuel tanks revealed that the right tank was void of fuel and the left tank was approximately three-fourths full. Additionally, the fuel selector was observed in the right fuel tank position. A small amount of fuel and air were noted in the fuel line leading to the engine, preventing the correct amount of fuel and air to mix, which would allow the engine to restart. No other anomalies were noted during the wreckage examination.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of the fuel supply, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA457
- Event ID
- 20090811X21748
- Case number
- ERA09LA457
- 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: 40393331709bcf8a307998426f5ed27d99971b4e3103c3bc94ef999923ee21fb; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:47:08.600Z.