Key Lime Air Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Denver International Airport (DEN) to Shalz Field (CBK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA117
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N66906
- Operator
- Key Lime Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, COTo Shalz Field (CBK), Colby, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1974)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- 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 commercial pilot was conducting a cargo flight in the airplane. The operator reported that, during taxi and takeoff, the pilot noted no issues with the airplane. During cruise flight, the left engine lost total power. The right engine then also lost total power, but the pilot failed to complete any of the required engine failure emergency procedures. He chose to perform a forced landing, during which the airplane impacted power lines and then a field, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane.
On-scene examination revealed that there was no apparent fuel smell nor fuel on the ground. During postaccident examination of the airplane, no useable fuel was found in the left and right outboard fuel tanks; however, 35 gallons of fuel were found in each of the two inboard fuel tanks. The fuel selectors were found in the "off" position. Further examination of the fuel system revealed that there was no fuel in the fuel lines leading to the left engine and that only about 2 teaspoons of fuel was present in the fuel inlet line to the right engine fuel strainer, indicating that the pilot had not properly managed the fuel, which led to fuel starvation to both engines. The examination revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Further, postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the pilot had not feathered both propellers, which would have increased the airplane's glide distance, and that he had not extended the flaps, which would have resulted in a slower touchdown speed and lower impact energy during the forced landing. Therefore, the pilot did not properly configure the airplane for the forced landing, which resulted in its high-energy impact with power lines and terrain.
The pilot was on duty all night the day before the accident and had to reposition a flight at 0330, at which point he had been awake for about 15 hours. The pilot reported that, about 40 minutes into the flight, he was definitely starting to feel fatigued. Shortly later, the engine issues began. The pilot reported that he believed that a high level of fatigue, previous issues with another airplane he had flown that day, and a recent company airplane accident had "caused him to not think straight and not perform the proper emergency procedures for engine failure in flight."
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management and failure to conduct the engine failure emergency procedures and his improper conduct of the forced landing, which resulted in fuel starvation, a total loss of engine power, and the subsequent high-energy impact with power lines and terrain. Contributing to the accident was pilot fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA117
- Event ID
- 20150122X23956
- Case number
- CEN15LA117
- 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: 00f6130dbca41a5bfc15636158ac4f34202d1734e588d8a2e99967945cf9dd8f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:02:45.764Z.