WPR14LA329 · Christen Industries Inc PITTS S 2B B
Lance Murray Aviation Christen Industries Inc PITTS S 2B B · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA329
- 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
Christen Industries Inc PITTS S 2B B
- Aircraft type
- Christen PITTS S 2B
- 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
- N88EW
- Operator
- Lance Murray Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1985)
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, following spin practice in a local practice area, he leveled the airplane and noticed that the bubble within the fuel sight gauge was not visible. As the pilot began to return to the departure airport, the engine began to run rough. The pilot immediately diverted to a nearby airport, and, shortly after diverting, the engine lost power. The pilot performed a left circling approach to the runway; however, he realized he was too high as he turned onto the base leg of the traffic pattern. The pilot then performed a left sideslip to increase the rate of descent. He did not think that he was in a safe position to land and performed a right 270-degree turn. The pilot stated that, during the turn, he realized the airplane would not be able to reach the runway, and he initiated a forced landing to an open field. Subsequently, the airplane landed hard and nosed over. The pilot reported that before the flight he thought that he had three-quarters of a tank of fuel onboard the airplane, which he thought was sufficient for a 30-minute flight plus visual flight rules reserve fuel requirements.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that when the main fuel tank fuel cap was removed, about 1 to 2 cups of liquid drained from the fuel tank. The engine was test run while installed on the airframe without incident. In addition, the fuel indicating system was found to function normally and no leaks were observed within the fuel system. Further examination of the airplane revealed no preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA329
- Event ID
- 20140806X05816
- Case number
- WPR14LA329
- 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: 04bef5bcb82174fbfabf5fae3fdd50892000404f4e230f5d616edff773fe33a7; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:36:22.114Z.