CEN10LA004 · Temco D-16A
Temco D-16A · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE) to Flying Cloud Airport (FCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA004
- 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
Temco D-16A
- Aircraft type
- Temco D-16
- 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
- N124N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Anoka, MNTo Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Eden Prairie, MN
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had just undergone its annual maintenance inspection. The pilot reported that he was in cruise flight in the twin-engine airplane about 600 feet above ground level when the left engine stopped producing power. He completed the shutdown checklist for the left engine and feathered the propeller. He applied full power to the right engine, but the airplane continued to lose altitude. He executed a forced landing to a large wooded area away from houses. Numerous witnesses reported that they heard and/or saw the airplane as it flew overhead at a low altitude. All reported hearing a loud engine noise without any sputtering. One witness reported that the left propeller was not turning. The inspection of the airplane revealed that the electric fuel pump found in the left engine nacelle exhibited blue staining on the top surface of the pump. The blue staining was consistent with a fuel leak. The test of the electric fuel pump revealed that the end cap gasket had failed, which allowed air to be drawn into the system by both the electric and engine-driven fuel pumps, thus starving the engine of fuel.
Probable cause
A total loss of left engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the failure of the engine's electric fuel pump end cap gasket, which allowed air to be drawn into the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA004
- Event ID
- 20091005X52022
- Case number
- CEN10LA004
- 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: 54d789add3151a169b7ce69fb6759cd5c49fbe471cc07db7464827e3860b2885; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:22:48.857Z.