WPR13LA011 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20
Cirrus Design Corp SR20 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From John Wayne Orange County International Airport (KSNA) to Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (KPRC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA011
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR20
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR20
- 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
- N499SF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John Wayne Orange County International Airport (KSNA), Santa Ana, CATo Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (KPRC), Prescott, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2005)
- 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 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to the first flight of the day, the pilot visually established the fuel quantity through the filler necks, observing what he believed to be full tanks. He subsequently checked the fuel gauges, which indicated that the wing tanks were each under half full. Surmising that the gauges were faulty, he departed on a short flight to a local airport to collect a passenger. After picking up the passenger, they departed for a cross-country flight. He did not service the airplane with fuel prior to departure, and after travelling for about 90 minutes the airplane ran out of fuel.
Examination of recorded data recovered from the airplane's flight displays revealed that its fuel consumption was appropriate for the flight profile. Subsequent examination of the airframe revealed that both fuel tanks were empty, and neither the engine nor airframe exhibited indications of a fuel leak.
The data further revealed that the airplane was approaching an airport as one of the tanks ran dry. The engine lost power; however, rather than landing, the pilot continued the flight after switching to the other tank. The other tank ran dry a short time later, and he performed a forced landing into a rocky outcropping, where the airplane sustained substantial damage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to perform an adequate preflight inspection, which resulted in inadequate fuel for the flight and the subsequent fuel exhaustion and a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to land the airplane at the first indication of low fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA011
- Event ID
- 20121015X75934
- Case number
- WPR13LA011
- 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: b7f82311e3a0fffa59b5bef006bf676c062e71cedcde923870aa02c11c7f4c8b; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:10:08.590Z.