ERA12IA090 · Cessna 402B
Nantucket Express Cessna 402B · Incident: fuel starvation on approach
From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD) to Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12IA090
- 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
- Incident
- 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 402B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N303PJ
- Operator
- Nantucket Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Norwood, MATo Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK), Nantucket, MA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The multi-engine airplane was approaching the destination airport with about 7 gallons of fuel remaining in each of the 50-gallon left and right main fuel tanks. While on short final approach to land, as the pilot fully extended the flaps, the airplane experienced a total loss of power on the right engine. The airplane touched down hard on a grassy area about 650 feet before the runway, bounced onto the runway, and came to rest. The pilot subsequently started both engines and taxied to the ramp area uneventfully. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right main fuel tank fuel transfer pump was inoperative. The fuel transfer pump was designed to operate continuously when the battery switch was in the on position. The purpose of the fuel transfer pump was to transfer fuel from the nose section of its respective main fuel tank to the fuel pick-up area near the center of the main fuel tank, which permitted steep descents with low main tank fuel quantity. It could not be determined when the fuel transfer pump failed; however, confirming pump operations was a required preflight inspection item for each main fuel tank.
Probable cause
The failure of the right main fuel tank transfer pump, which resulted in a total loss of engine power on the right engine during approach due to fuel starvation, and a subsequent hard landing. Contributing to the incident was the pilot's operation of the airplane with a low fuel quantity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12IA090
- Event ID
- 20111130X00216
- Case number
- ERA12IA090
- 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: afff3afdbdc5695df6fc653e0087bf79cf7a1f1ec338d5e4769a636b89039e4d; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:58:18.693Z.