ERA14LA378 · Birchler Boyd EAGLE 540
Billy Werth Airshows Birchler Boyd EAGLE 540 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Northern Aroostook Regional Airport (FVE) to Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport (SFM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA378
- 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
Birchler Boyd EAGLE 540
- Aircraft type
- Birchler Boyd EAGLE 540
- 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
- N34BJ
- Operator
- Billy Werth Airshows
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northern Aroostook Regional Airport (FVE), Frenchville, METo Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport (SFM), Sanford, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2007)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed on a cross-country flight in the experimental, amateur-built airplane with each fuel tank (one main fuel tank, one fuselage auxiliary fuel tank, and one upper wing fuel tank) filled to capacity, for a total of 51 gallons of fuel onboard. About 1 hour 50 minutes into the flight, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot's efforts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, so he maneuvered the airplane toward a road. During the landing, the pilot could not maintain the appropriate airspeed for a power-off landing, and the airplane subsequently impacted the ground hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and bottom wing. An examination of the accident site revealed that the fuel tanks had not been breached, and no visible signs of fuel and no fuel odor were observed.
The fuel system was designed to plumb fuel from the upper wing tank directly into the main fuel tank through a drain valve; the engine was receiving fuel from the main fuel tank at the time of the engine power loss. During postaccident examination, both the main and the auxiliary fuselage fuel tanks were found void of fuel; the upper wing fuel tank was found almost full. The pilot reported that, at times, the upper wing fuel tank would drain slowly or not at all into the main fuel tank; however, postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies or malfunctions that could have precluded normal operation. According to performance data provided by the pilot, the main fuel tank should have had about 7 gallons of fuel remaining at the time of the loss of power without any supplemental fuel from the upper wing tank. The reason for the main fuel tank being devoid of fuel could not be determined.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA378
- Event ID
- 20140811X81213
- Case number
- ERA14LA378
- 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: af8bb57b7ad060cb0d73eec0e1d9f3745966996fbe8bf183b612bf7f33057b90; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:37:43.883Z.