ERA12LA589 · Cessna 421B
Cessna 421B · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From 4R4 · Fairhope, AL to Craig Field (SEM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA589
- 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 421B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N1537T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4R4 · Fairhope, ALTo Craig Field (SEM), Selma, AL
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he may have unintentionally positioned both the right and left engine fuel selectors to the left main fuel tank during the accident flight. When the right engine experienced a total loss of engine power during cruise flight, the pilot moved its fuel selector to right main fuel tank; however, the pilot did not select the fuel boost pump to "low" per the checklist and as a result, the system may have provided too much fuel to the engine for a restart. The left engine then lost partial power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a dirt road about 6 miles from the intended destination airport. Both fuel selectors were found positioned to the left main fuel tank, but the pilot also indicated he positioned the left fuel selector to the left auxiliary fuel tank at some point.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right main fuel tank had been compromised during the accident sequence; however, there was no evidence of fuel at the accident site. The right auxiliary fuel tank contained about 20 gallons of fuel and the right wing locker fuel tank was empty. The left main fuel tank, left wing locker fuel tank, and left auxiliary fuel tank were intact and did not contain any fuel.
Examination of the airplane and both engines did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. Although the airplane was not completely exhausted of fuel, operating with such low quantities would have required precise fuel management and fuel selector positions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power on the right engine and a partial loss of engine power on the left engine due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA589
- Event ID
- 20121015X63653
- Case number
- ERA12LA589
- 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: 1b3695c5af215d5e5dc440ba17325ab83ce7ab085345f52d877e9d80c8b3e580; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:09:57.507Z.