CEN11LA117 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG) to Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA117
- 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
Piper PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N92358
- Operator
- Richard Davidson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG), Bowling Green, KYTo Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Anoka, 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About an hour after takeoff the airplane was in cruise flight at 16,500 feet mean sea level (msl) when the pilot heard a loud noise followed by a rapid cabin depressurization. The pilot rapidly descended to 10,500 feet msl. The pressurization stabilized and he continued to his destination airport. About 3 hours and 25 minutes after takeoff, the airplane was approaching the destination airport and was about 1,500 feet above ground level when the engine suddenly lost power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine by putting the mixture, propeller, and throttle controls full forward. He turned on the emergency fuel pump and engaged the starter button, but the engine did not start. The pilot executed a forced landing at night to a field that had about 2 - 2.5 feet of snow in it. During the landing roll, the left wing separated from the fuselage. The inspection of the airplane revealed that the right wing fuel tank was empty. The left wing fuel tank was intact and appeared to be full of fuel. The fuel selector was found on the left tank. The pilot reported that he was certain that he had switched tanks sometime during the climb, but was not certain if he had switched tanks after that. The pilot reported that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the distraction of the cabin depressurization.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA117
- Event ID
- 20101220X81323
- Case number
- CEN11LA117
- 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: 5bbc0fbb58901b7fab5a4185fae6e0d9007284c83cee3ab6e36826a60c54526b; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:38:07.095Z.