CEN14CA227 · Piper PA 24-250
Anderson Aviation Piper PA 24-250 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH) to Bulverde Airpark (1T8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA227
- 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 24-250
- 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
- N7308P
- Operator
- Anderson Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH), Houston, TXTo Bulverde Airpark (1T8), Bulverde, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1961)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot with three passengers planned to depart and return on a cross-country flight. The pilot stated that the airplane's left fuel tank was filled to an inch below the collar, and the right fuel tank was filled to two inches below the collar. He estimated that the airplane had 40-45 gallons of fuel on board, with a planned en route time of 57 minutes, and about a 10 knot tailwind. Once at a cruise altitude of 7,500 feet, he set the manifold pressure at 21 inches and engine rpm at 2,300 for a fuel burn of 12.3 gallons/hr per the pilot operating handbook. The pilot reported for the return leg he again visually checked the fuel level in each tank. He estimated 12-15 gallons in the left tank and 10 in the right, for a total of 22-25 gallons. The pilot added that fuel burn seemed normal and he decided not to add fuel, he also stated that estimations are not an accurate science and that a fuel stick was not provided to confirm the fuel level. After departing for the return flight, he switched fuel tanks from the left side to the right side. About 15 minutes later, the pilot noticed a reduction in power and switched back to the left side fuel tank. Engine power was restored, and the pilot stated that he did not feel that the fuel had been exhausted from the right side based on his calculations. A few minutes later, the engine lost power and the pilot preformed a forced landing to a construction site. A post-crash examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the airplane's fuselage and left wing during the forced landing. Additionally, the fuel tanks were empty and were not breached in the accident.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from the pilot's inadequate preflight planning and inflight decision making.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA227
- Event ID
- 20140505X93659
- Case number
- CEN14CA227
- 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: 84378d5ec9d527d62b044a6db0ebbb6a4e882da8ec848df19cc37d1b937fea54; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:35:00.756Z.