CEN11LA651 · North American AT-6
North American AT-6 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From Hat Field (5N7) to Mason Jewett Field (TEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA651
- 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
North American AT-6
- Aircraft type
- North American AT-6
- 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
- N217RK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hat Field (5N7), Nunica, MITo Mason Jewett Field (TEW), Mason, MI
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the airplane had been refueled to its full capacity prior to the flight to the accident airport. The pilot indicated that the "flight to the accident airport required 50 minutes, which would have burned, with start-up, taxi, and flight time, 29 gallons.” The pilot then departed the accident airport and stated that he applied full takeoff power. On climbout, the low fuel pressure light illuminated just before gear retraction, the fuel pressure then dropped to zero, and the engine abruptly lost power. A video taken at the airport where the accident occurred revealed that the airplane lost power during takeoff, impacted a tree on the left side of the departure runway, and subsequently impacted terrain. The airplane’s engine monitor data revealed no recorded engine anomalies and fuel flow monitor data indicated 32.5 gallons of fuel used up to the time of the accident, and 77.1 gallons remaining. The pilot stated that he verified the fuel prior to departure at the accident airport by visual reference of fuel gauges and airplane fuel flow meter. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the right fuel tank was full. No anomalies were detected during the examination of the engine-driven fuel pump, gascolator, and the wobble pump. The fuel selector was found selected to the reserve position, which feeds from the reserve fuel retained within the standpipe and any additional left tank fuel above that retained reserve amount. The left main and reserve standpipes and screens were installed correctly and were free of obstructions. The left fuel tank contained about four gallons of fuel when it was defueled. The pilot did not visually check the level of the fuel tank’s contents prior to departure; had he done so, he would have recognized that the left tank’s fuel level was below what was expected. Fuel usage figures provided by both the pilot and the engine monitor data indicated there should have been over 20 gallons of fuel remaining in the left tank at the time of the accident. The reason for the discrepancy between the expected and actual fuel amounts could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation during climbout for undetermined reasons, because postaccident examination of the fuel system did not reveal any discrepancies that would have precluded normal engine operation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot not visually checking the fuel level prior to departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA651
- Event ID
- 20110919X55123
- Case number
- CEN11LA651
- 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: 7e79bd717406c3c8ed6ada33f3094008ac9e255d30914727665011dabec29918; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:45:23.015Z.