CEN14LA293 · Knauf RV-7
Knauf RV-7 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Charles W. Baker Airport (2M8) to Rockwall Municipal Airport (F46)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA293
- 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
Knauf RV-7
- Aircraft type
- Knauf RV-7
- 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
- N707HK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles W. Baker Airport (2M8), Millington, TNTo Rockwall Municipal Airport (F46), Rockwall, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2010)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 reported that, during the final portion of the planned 2 hour 15 minute cross-country flight, about 10 miles from the destination airport and while descending through 4,000 ft mean sea level, the engine began to run roughly and eventually lost total power. The airplane had insufficient altitude remaining to glide to the closest airport, so the pilot completed a forced landing to a nearby road. The pilot had to maneuver the airplane over a row of trees shortly before landing, which reduced the airspeed below best glide speed, and, as a result, the airplane landed hard on the road. The airplane bounced and came to rest on its landing gear in a ditch located alongside the road.
A postaccident visual examination established that there was no usable fuel in either wing fuel tank. Additionally, both wing tanks appeared to be undamaged, and there was no evidence of a fuel leak. The pilot reported that the airplane was equipped with capacitive fuel sending units in each wing fuel tank; however, since their installation, the fuel sending units had been unreliable in providing accurate fuel levels. He stated that he added 14 gallons of fuel to the right fuel tank and estimated that the airplane fuel load was about 29 gallons before departure, which would have provided adequate fuel for the flight; however, he did not visually confirm or measure the actual amount of fuel in the left wing fuel tank, which was not refueled before departure. The pilot reported that the total loss of engine power experienced during the accident flight was due to fuel exhaustion. Additionally, the pilot stated that the accident could have been prevented if he had verified the actual amount of fuel available in both fuel tanks before departing on the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to verify the airplane's actual fuel quantity before departure, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and the subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA293
- Event ID
- 20140617X42217
- Case number
- CEN14LA293
- 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: b86438325d250a1cf7055d1272ea83d71f8ed9ce39a34dbbab23357ac9dc80f3; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:05:56.103Z.