CEN14LA526 · Preiss Vans RV-9A
Preiss Vans RV-9A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Grove Regional Airport (KGMJ) to Hobart Regional Airport (KHBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA526
- 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
Preiss Vans RV-9A
- Aircraft type
- Preiss Vans RV-9
- 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
- N259H
- Operator
- Robert T. Hudson II · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grove Regional Airport (KGMJ), Grove, OKTo Hobart Regional Airport (KHBR), Hobart, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2002)
- 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 his preflight calculations, he estimated that sufficient fuel was onboard the airplane to fly it to his intended destination with a 30-minute reserve. About 10 minutes from the destination airport, the fuel in the left tank was depleted, so the pilot switched to the right tank; the fuel monitor indicated that 5 gallons of fuel were remaining in the right tank. The pilot reported that, with an estimated fuel consumption rate of 6 gallons per hour, he was confident that he would reach the destination airport with fuel to spare. About 5 minutes from the airport, the fuel monitor indicated that 3 gallons of fuel were remaining in the right tank. Shortly thereafter and 2 miles east of the destination, the engine lost power. The pilot made a forced landing in a field and allowed the airplane to land hard to avoid an incipient stall. After the accident, the pilot reported that the airplane had run out of fuel. Examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel tanks were empty.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from the pilot's erroneous preflight fuel calculations and inadequate in-flight fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA526
- Event ID
- 20140929X74747
- Case number
- CEN14LA526
- 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: c24415e682f392659689c20863d9db9a96501bde0d757b64afcacd4436795462; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:48:57.518Z.