CEN13LA362 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA362
- 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
Piper PA-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N856CC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE), Eagle, CO
- 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
- 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
- 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
During the flight, the airplane's engine experienced a loss of power, and the copilot took control of the airplane from the pilot, who had been flying, and directed the pilot to attempt to restart the engine. The airplane descended and impacted terrain short of the runway. The fuel tank selector was found in the left main tank position, but no visible fuel was found in the left main tank. After battery power was applied to the airplane, the engine data monitoring system indicated that the left main tank had 11 gallons of fuel and the right main tank had 8 gallons of fuel. After the fuel floats were moved, the monitoring system indicated that the left main tank had 2 gallons of fuel and that the right main tank had 9.5 gallons of fuel. Regardless of the fuel quantity indications, the pilots should have known how much fuel was in each tank and, based on fuel calculations, known when each tank was going to become empty. Further, the pilot should have switched fuel tanks as part of the engine restart procedures; however, he did not report doing so. Each of the four fuel tank senders were examined and wear and corrosion were found on all of them. When tested with a voltmeter, none of the fuel floats provided consistent electrical signals, which would alter the amount of fuel indicated on the engine monitoring system. Because the selector was positioned to the left main tank, the engine lost power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilots’ improper fuel management, which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was worn and corroded fuel senders, which transmitted inaccurate fuel readings to the fuel monitoring system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA362
- Event ID
- 20130621X85029
- Case number
- CEN13LA362
- 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: 063b97ab47fe317efb08cab2491858a07a85b7fb81eadb2e19890b62af37c4d3; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:58:46.156Z.