CEN10CA087 · Maule M-4-220C
Candlerock International Maule M-4-220C · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) to Crystal City Municipal Airport (20R)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA087
- 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
Maule M-4-220C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-4
- 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
- N2028U
- Operator
- Candlerock International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TXTo Crystal City Municipal Airport (20R), Crystal City, TX
- 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
While on a night cross-country flight the pilot experienced problems with the airplane’s global positioning system (GPS) and elected to land to recharge the battery. Once airborne the pilot again experienced problems with the GPS and received vectors to his destination airport. While in the vicinity of the destination airport, the pilot was unable to activate the airport’s runway lights or to see the airport beacon. The pilot then selected an alternate airport located 45 miles away; however, while en route the airplane’s fuel supply was exhausted and the airplane experienced a complete loss of engine power. During the ensuing forced landing the main landing gear collapsed and the airplane came to rest upright in a ditch. The pilot and passengers were able to exit unassisted. A review of flight planning publications for the destination airport revealed that the rotating beacon was listed as out of service and that a frequency other than the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency was needed to activate the runway lights. In addition, Federal Aviation Regulations require a pilot flying at night to have enough fuel to arrive at the intended destination plus an additional 45 minutes worth of fuel.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot’s inadequate preflight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA087
- Event ID
- 20100105X60423
- Case number
- CEN10CA087
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-01-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 96a49a0f96bda6db3390a9375052e06b5fedc06232d48981e125d528cad7ae7b; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:36:20.877Z.