CEN11LA448 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW) to Burlington Municipal Airport (BUU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA448
- 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
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N2332V
- Operator
- Stick and Rudder
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW), Kenosha, WITo Burlington Municipal Airport (BUU), Burlington, WI
- 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 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed with the fuel selector set to the right fuel tank, which was full of fuel. About 30 minutes after departure, he made a touch-and-go landing and takeoff at his destination airport. During the initial climb, the engine started to lose power when the airplane was about 100 feet above the runway. The pilot entered a left turn and attempted to land on an adjacent grass runway, but the airplane impacted the terrain short of the runway. Postaccident examination of the airplane’s fuel system revealed that the left fuel tank was empty and the right fuel tank was full of fuel. Examination of the airplane’s fuel selector revealed that the fuel selector indicator handle was improperly installed. When the fuel selector indicator handle was placed in the right fuel tank position, the fuel was actually coming from the left fuel tank. There was no record in the airplane’s maintenance logbook that indicated replacement of the fuel selector valve, the fuel selector indicator handle, or the fuel selector placard. It was not determined who performed the maintenance on the fuel selector and had improperly installed the fuel selector indicator handle.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the fuel selector indicator handle, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA448
- Event ID
- 20110705X51242
- Case number
- CEN11LA448
- 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: ae2db4f45bf096c8e9cad9a4e71892ac1d73aa65d54c6666f46dc2abad256709; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:23:46.831Z.