CEN12LA134 · Aero Commander 500-B
Central Airlines Aero Commander 500-B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (KMKC) to Cushing Municipal Airport (KCUH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA134
- 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
Aero Commander 500-B
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 500
- 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
- N524HW
- Operator
- Central Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (KMKC), Kansas City, MOTo Cushing Municipal Airport (KCUH), Cushing, OK
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was en route on a positioning flight when the airplane’s right engine surged and experienced a partial loss of power. He adjusted the power and fuel mixture controls; however, a few seconds later, the engine surged again. The pilot noted that the fuel flow gauge was below 90 pounds, so he turned the right fuel pump on. The pilot then felt a surge on the left engine, so he performed the same actions he as did for the right engine. He believed that he had some sort of fuel starvation problem. The pilot then turned to an alternate airport, at which time both engines lost total power. The airplane impacted trees and terrain about 1.5 miles from the airport. The left side fuel tank was breached during the accident; however, there was no indication of a fuel leak, and about a gallon of fuel was recovered from the airplane during the wreckage retrieval. The company’s route coordinator reported that prior to the accident flight, the pilot checked the fuel gauge and said the airplane had 120 gallons of fuel. A review of the airplane’s flight history revealed that, following the flight immediately before the accident flight, the airplane was left with approximately 50 gallons of fuel on board; there was no record of the airplane having been refueled after that flight. Another company pilot reported the airplane fuel gauge had a unique trait in that, after the airplane’s electrical power has been turned off, the gauge will rise 40 to 60 gallons before returning to zero. When the master switch was turned to the battery position during an examination of another airplane belonging to the operator, the fuel gauge indicated approximately 100 gallons of fuel; however, when the master switch was turned to the off position, the fuel quantity on the gauge rose to 120 gallons, before dropping off scale, past empty. Additionally, the fuel cap was removed and fuel could be seen in the tank, but there was no way to visually verify the quantity of fuel in the tank.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, which did not correctly identify the airplane’s fuel quantity before departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA134
- Event ID
- 20120117X95955
- Case number
- CEN12LA134
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-01-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bd6e29309d57033ef1f24683660dadd54d4a955677b8aa2a6db5266211988571; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:04:18.202Z.