CEN12LA094 · Cessna 305A
Cessna 305A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From New Braunfels National Airport (KBAZ) to Gillespie County Airport (T82)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA094
- 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 305A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N6735Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Braunfels National Airport (KBAZ), New Braunfels, TXTo Gillespie County Airport (T82), Fredericksburg, TX
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on approach to the runway, the pilot added power to the engine to adjust the approach path, and the engine did not respond. The pilot was unable to restart the engine, and he performed a forced landing to a nearby field. During the landing, the airplane struck a wire and then the ground. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that caps were present on the fuel tank vent lines, creating a vacuum and preventing fuel flow to the engine. The pilot said that he had placed the caps on the fuel vent lines to keep insects out of the lines and the fuel tanks and forgot to remove them during his preflight inspection. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunction or failure of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a subsequent loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA094
- Event ID
- 20111201X21856
- Case number
- CEN12LA094
- 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: b36e91e319a5707eac0e714814c91fab3ca5f28fb15ff48d0877b0ff4a0621f3; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:58:39.655Z.