WPR12CA172 · Rockwell International S-2R
Meines Interprises Rockwell International S-2R · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Palouse, WA to Palouse, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12CA172
- 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
Rockwell International S-2R
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell S-2
- 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
- N4971X
- Operator
- Meines Interprises
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palouse, WATo Palouse, WA
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 landed after completing an aerial application to a field, and planned to refuel the airplane while the application tank was reloaded. He said that among other distractions, he was having problems with his global positioning system, and began discussing it with another pilot. The pilot reported that after takeoff, he realized that he did not have the ground crew refuel the airplane. He said that the destination field was close, so he decided to continue rather than return and refuel the airplane. He indicated that the fuel gauges indicated 1/4 capacity at takeoff and were bouncing around 1/8 capacity after he completed two passes. The engine subsequently lost power due to fuel exhaustion, and the pilot landed in a flat field, which was wet and soft. During the landing roll, the airplane nosed over, substantially damaging the vertical stabilizer and rudder. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s distraction and subsequent failure to have the airplane refueled.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12CA172
- Event ID
- 20120419X92052
- Case number
- WPR12CA172
- 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: 3dcc63898c94025102a944fa59065bb7c2136e2a00588229c80ad6ce07ff3b43; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:50:10.263Z.