CEN10FA122 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Tradewind Airport (TDW) to Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA122
- 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
- 2 · 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
Piper PA-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N8501Y
- Operator
- William Ellett
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tradewind Airport (TDW), Amarillo, TXTo Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM), Alamagordo, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 contamination
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had just departed when, about one minute after takeoff, it made a turn as if to return to the airport at about 900 feet above ground level. A witness observed the airplane flying low before it impacted a warehouse building. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed water in the fuel recovered from both the left and right engine fuel systems. Both auxiliary fuel tank caps could be removed without releasing the expansion tab and the left main fuel tank cap could be removed without unscrewing the release mechanism, indicative that the caps were loose and worn. The airplane had been exposed to accumulating snow the week prior to the accident. An examination of the airplane's remaining systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to detect water contaminated fuel, which resulted in a loss of engine power shortly after takeoff. Contributing to the accident were the worn and loose fuel caps, which allowed water to enter the fuel tanks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA122
- Event ID
- 20100217X01727
- Case number
- CEN10FA122
- 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, 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: 52a14bd2af210f6815ef714794b9d5fc19abedaa8988db37ac04bcc2c09a4a9c; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:39:45.331Z.